Here are the 3 Urls I could think of off the top of my head. These three photographers are very different in style, lighting, composition, content, and concept.
Lets start off with Hristo Shindov. Shindov's style is very contrasty and most of his work is composited, but if you look at his Advertising, Stories/Concept, Transportation, and many of his other categories, he uses a technique of compositing his subject into a lit via HDR background. One image that relates great with architecture and learning the right time of day to shoot buildings is his Nissan advertisement. Shindov has captured one of the perfect moments the building in the background is being lit by the sun. Although this may not be directly related to actually artificially lighting a building, it relates to the job of the architectural photographer to work around the schedule of the sun and to pre-produce when he/she will photograph that angle of the building. This is essential for a lot of day time photographs of buildings and interiors, getting the right angle, height, and location of the sun during the day can make or break an otherwise great photograph.
Shindov also does this in his other advertising photos for Irwin tools. His planning for time of day and his use of lighting to light the interiors of the unfinished home, tell the viewer that he has a sense of light and time of day if he is shooting something that relates to architecture. These images dealing with the house utilize another technique of balancing flash with daylight and getting that perfect balance and direction of light.
Moving on to Dave Hill. I found out about Dave Hill awhile ago and really loved his work and his compositing and retouching to tell the story in each photo. The two images of the football coach and the football team are examples where architecture plays an important roll within the image. Without the stadium being lit the way Dave Hill waited for the sun to hit it perfectly, the image wouldn't have been as punchy and dramatic. The lighting he uses for the models and the team players helps put the entire story together with the correct use of flash and direction. I don't know if these are composites, but the stadium definitely plays a key part as the background of the photo. Dave Hill I think was one of the first photographers to be doing this type of compositing and retouching with portraits and story-tellying via photography.
Juergen Nogai. Yes, once you go to his website you see he is an actual architectural photographer. Well, once you go to Projects on his website, and you go to Herman Miller, you can see a new style he is breaking into with furniture advertisements for one of the largest modern furniture manufacturers. Juergen Nogai is Julius Shulman's partner, and his specialty is shooting mid-century modern residences. His project of shooting Herman Miller furniture is very interesting to me because I could see myself shooting the same type of photography in the future for product manufacturers and not only architects. This is one of the many ways architecture can be used to sell and show a product in its environment. Juergen just so happens to use furniture, but it could also be applied to many different products that happen to relate to the home or business and even products that might not be related to architecture at all. Juergen's lighting seems to have gotten much better and more clean looking with clean highlights and natural looking interiors although lit with flash. Juergen uses flash so he can evenly balance the inside and outside exposures, just like Julius Shulman did throughout his career. This exemplifies a level of professionalism because doing what Nogai is doing with this furniture is not easy. I have also talked with Juergen and seen him speak, and as far as I know he still shoots 4x5 film and only does minimal retouching after scanning to turn them into digital files.
Lastly, I wanted to share a 4th person that I've known for a bit and spoken to in class, is Joel Grimes. I won't talk too much on him but check out his work to see how he uses architecture in his advertising and people photography. It seems that using architectural backgrounds and dropping in the models in post-production is getting larger in the photography industry. The way these people light these backgrounds is as simple as using HDR technology in programs such as Adobe PS CS5 or Photomatix Pro. It's a quite interesting way to use architecture in other forms of photography other than architectural photography.
