One of the joys of visiting New York City is the wonderful architecture of its buildings, both old and new. One of my favorite buildings in New York is the Chrysler Building, and one of the main reasons I like it so much is all the wonderful Art Deco details used in its design. Nothing is more iconic that the metal top which adorns this building. I took this shot on the last day of a recent trip to New York. I wasn’t able to get a nice night shot, so I worked with what was available. I was using my 28-300 lens on a rented D800 and I took numerous shots of the building from various angles. What I really wanted was an extreme close-up, but by the time you get far enough away from the building to have a nice angle on the top, even 300mm doesn’t get you very close. What I ended up doing for this shot was to crop a section out of larger image to get the detail that I wanted. Fortunately I was shooting with a rented D800 which has 36 megapixels to work with. Even after a very tight crop the image is still quite large and detailed.

I was going through some images this morning looking for something to post on my Google+ account for the SacredSunday theme when I came across a picture I had taken of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I had previously done a black & white conversion that I previously posted to my blog. I recently added Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4 to my toolkit and I was just curious as to what I might be able to do using that plugin.

This is a shot of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that I took a couple of years ago. It’s actually a panorama created from three shots (the original pano is shown below). I’ve actually been working on variations of this image since I took it. I’ve played around with a variety of ideas. I recently purchased theTopaz Labs Detail plugin and I experimented with it on this image.

On a recent trip to northern Michigan, my wife and I visited Traverse City Commons. I’ve posted shots from this location before. The site is the location of the old Northern Michigan Asylum where they are converting the old buildings into retail, office and residential spaces. The weather the morning we arrived was cloudy, but breaks were beginning to appear in the clouds. As the sun peaked through it shone on the roof tops and really highlighted the towers/cupolas that are a key feature of the main building.

My wife and I are spending some time in Northern Michigan, including Mackinac Island situated between Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas. The island has a great collection of summer ‘cottages’, most of which are really large homes. They were generally built by wealthy industrialists and needed to accommodate family and servants. A nice example of a typical Mackinac Island cottage is ‘Brigadoon’ shown above. This cottage has a wonderful view of Mackinac Island’s harbor.

This shot was taken in the old wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). I’ve always liked this gallery and I’ve been here a few times to take pictures of it. Each time is a little different, different people, different light, etc. I had a blog post back in 2010 with an image similar to the one you see here, but with a completely different method and style of processing. For that image I went with a grittier, almost HDR look. I liked the way the processing brought out the detail in the floor, but I’ve always felt that this shot was meant for black & white. I also wasn’t too thrilled with the number of people in the shot, so I went back at a later date and took the shot you see above. In this shot, there is only the one woman on the bench, which I like better. I also chose to convert the image to black & white. Initially I created an image to which I added a bit of film grain, however I ultimately decided that I wanted a smoother look. I edited the shot to hide the grain layer and used Lightroom noise reduction to help smooth the shot out even more.

Today’s image is a close-up of some of the details that made St. Peter’s Cathedral so interesting. If you saw yesterday’s post, you know this picture is of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Marquette, Michigan. When I first saw this church my eyes were immediately drawn to all the neat details. The building has lots of carved stone and a variety of colors, mostly in the domes. The HDR image I posted yesterday tried to convey the colors and today’s image is focused on the details.

One of the things which surprised me on my family’s visit to Marquette, Michigan was the interesting older architecture of many of the buildings. I was also surprised at the number and variety of churches for a town of approximately 20,000. It wasn’t too surprising to see a Catholic church, however, since the city was named after Father Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary. What I love about this church is all the detail work, especially the tile work on the domed towers. I took several pictures, both of the entire structure as well as some of the detail work.

A couple of years ago I visited Adrian, Michigan and ran across this wonderful old courthouse building. I didn’t have a camera with me at the time and I’ve always wanted to come back and take some pictures. I’m only about an hour’s drive away from Adrian, but I never found the time to get back until this past weekend. The weather was sunny and pleasant and I thought the mid-morning light might look good on the building, so I packed up my camera and drove to Adrian.

This is a shot of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I drive by this church frequently, and I’ve always liked the way it looks when the sun is shining on it in the afternoon. I’m a big fan of contrast and the sharp angles of the building combined with the angle of the sun creates an interesting look.