The photographer's brief

The site’s voice is editorial. The photographs should read the same way: considered, plumb, naturally lit, and unhurried. This page is the working brief — every staff and contributor photograph submitted for publication should follow it.

The short version

• Aspect: 16:9 horizontal. Always. Crop to 16:9 in post if needed.
• Resolution: at least 2400 px on the long edge.
• Format: JPEG, sRGB, quality 90+. (Send the RAW too if you can.)
• Verticals plumb. Buildings should not lean. Correct in post.
• Natural light. No flash on facades. Avoid midday in summer.
• No identifiable faces without written permission.
• Credit line: Photograph by [Name], alexandria.kingst.com, [Year].
• Filename: <place-slug>-<role>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.jpg e.g. carlyle-house-hero-2026-04-22.jpg

Aspect ratio and crop

Every published photograph crops to 16:9 — the same proportion as a modern widescreen frame. The page templates assume it; non-16:9 photographs get center-cropped, which is rarely what the photographer intended.

If a building is tall and narrow (a single row house, a steeple, a chimney detail), shoot it as if for a 16:9 magazine spread: pull back, include the neighbors, and let the subject breathe horizontally. A single tall building on a wide frame looks better with sky and street context around it than it does cramped into a portrait crop.

If you absolutely cannot fit the subject horizontally (e.g. an obelisk), flag the photograph as aspect: "4/5" in its image record and we will honor a portrait crop for that one place.

Framing — three shots per place

Aim to deliver three photographs per place:

1. The hero. A three-quarter angle of the front facade, with one of the side elevations visible. Stand across the street if possible — a long focal length (50–85mm equivalent) compresses the building’s relationship to its neighbors and keeps the verticals plumb. This is the photograph that opens the page.
2. The detail. One close-up of the thing that makes this place unique — a date stone, a Federal-period fanlight, a smoke-blackened keystone, a cast-iron balcony, a hand-carved newel post. Tight framing, soft daylight, no foreground clutter.
3. The context. A wide shot showing the place in its block — its neighbors, the street it sits on, the sidewalk, a passing car if that helps date the scene. This frames the place in its city.

If you only get one, make it the hero.

Light

• Golden hour (the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset) is best for facade work. The sun is low and warm, shadows are long, brick glows.
• Overcast is the second-best light. Diffuse, even, no harsh shadows. Especially good for stone and stucco.
• Avoid midday in summer. The sun is overhead; eaves cast deep shadows on the facade; brick reads orange and the sky bleaches white.
• Avoid backlit subjects unless you’re after a silhouette.
• No flash on facades. Ever.

Season

• Late autumn through early spring is best for dense-canopy neighborhoods (Old Town North, parts of Rosemont). The leaves are off, facades are visible, branches are bare.
• Late spring through early autumn is best for landscape places (Fort Ward, Mount Vernon, the waterfront). Greenery + period architecture is the canonical combination.
• Snow is a gift if you get it — shoot quickly, before the plows.

Lenses and verticals

• Use a moderate lens. A 24–35mm equivalent on a full frame is the sweet spot for facades. Anything wider distorts; anything tighter forces you across the street, which is often a feature.
• Keep the camera level. Tilting up to capture a tall building introduces vertical convergence — the building seems to lean back. Either back up, use a tilt-shift lens (rare), or correct in Lightroom’s Transform panel.
• Architectural photography is plumb. Verticals should be vertical in the published frame. This is non-negotiable.

People

• No identifiable faces without written, signed permission. The archive’s editorial standard refuses surveillance-style imagery.
• Crowds are fine if no individual is clearly recognizable.
• Re-enactors at heritage events are usually willing to be photographed and credited — ask, and capture their consent.
• Children: never, unless their parent or guardian has given written permission and the image clearly serves a story.

Documenting historical markers

If you photograph a sign, marker, or plaque, also photograph the post-mounted location — a wider shot showing the marker in its streetscape. Markers are far more meaningful in context than as isolated text.

For markers from the City of Alexandria’s historic-marker program (the brown-edged metal signs), the long edge of the marker should fill at least 60% of the frame, the text should be legible, and the photograph should not be at an oblique angle that flattens the typography.

Credit and licensing

• Credit line is required on every published photograph. The format is: Photograph by [Name], alexandria.kingst.com, [Year].
• Submitter retains copyright. Publication grants the archive a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to display the image on the site, in social-media share cards derived from the site, and in print derivatives of the site (a future guidebook, etc.).
• Public-domain sources (LOC, NARA, Wikimedia Commons) carry the source attribution we received them under.

File names and delivery

<place-slug>-<role>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.jpg

Examples:

• carlyle-house-hero-2026-04-22.jpg
• carlyle-house-detail-2026-04-22.jpg — the carved keystone over the front door
• marshall-house-context-2026-04-22.jpg — King & Pitt streets including the marker

Deliver via the contribute form, an SFTP folder if you have access, or attached to a GitHub issue tagged photo-batch. RAW alongside JPEG is welcomed but not required.

Working shoot list

The active list of places that need photographs is maintained as the image-shooting-list.csv export and the clustered shoot-plan map. Both are regenerated on each build.

Questions, edits, additions to this brief

This page is itself version-controlled. Open a pull request against content/about/photography/index.md or file an editor’s note.