11 Superb Architectural Photographs, as Selected by AIA|LA

The Los Angeles chapter announced the winners of its first Architectural Photography Awards.

For an article in ARCHITECT a few years ago, Ernest Beck spoke with publicist Elizabeth Kubany about her tips for hiring an architectural photographer. He reported: "It’s critical to find a photographer who gets you and how you want your building represented, Kubany says. After all, the photographer’s job is to create an image that captures and explains a three-dimensional building in a two-dimensional format for someone who will probably never see it in reality."

This is the photographer's basic role: shoot a building. But then there are those images—think Julius Shulman's famous Stahl House photograph—that add a little bit of something else. On Thursday, the Los Angeles chapter of the AIA announced the 11 winning images in its first Architectural Photography Awards, which were open to photographers and subjects anywhere in the world. The compositions range in geography and architectural style, but one point unifies the bunch: The photographs do more than simply capture a structure.