Posted on Sep.26, 2011, under Mechanical

(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 145mm, ISO 800, 7 exposures @ f/5.6)

When the weather starts to get worse, I like to take the time to visit the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The museum houses a great collection of ‘industrial’ artifacts and they are quite reasonable about photography. One of the areas that I like to visit is the section on power generation. The museum has a great collection of generators from very old to more modern. I’m just attracted to the large scale and interesting mechanical details of these machines.

The shot above is was created from a 7 exposure HDR originally processed using Photomatix. Normally I like what the tonemapping process does to metal, but for this image it just didn’t work. After sitting on the image for several months, I took another look at it and decided to see what it would look like in black and white. I used Silver Efex Pro 2 to do the conversion and after flipping through some of the presets, I selected one of the ‘noir’ settings and then made further adjustments. I played with the contrast and grain to create a nice gritty image which I thought suited the subject. (The image below shows the normally exposed shot, not the tonemapped HDR.)

Always happy to hear your feedback.

Copyright ©2010-2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

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