Atlas and St. Patrick’s Cathedral – NYC
by James Howe on Apr.08, 2012, under Travel
(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 200, 1/2 sec @ f/3.2)
I have a trip to New York City coming up soon and I’ve been going through some past images that I’ve taken in New York to get some ideas about what I might want to shoot on this trip. I came across this shot that I took of the Atlas statue located in Rockefeller Center, just across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I’ve worked on this image before but never really came up with something I really liked. I’ve tried various things to remove the extra buildings since I wanted the focus to be on Atlas and the cathedral across the street. I tried something new this morning. I used a couple filter in Color Efex Pro4 to bring out some detail in the shot and increase color saturation, and then I used a Film Noir preset in Silver Efex Pro 2 to convert the image to black and white. I made some additional adjustments and came up with the final image. I think it has a nice almost hand-drawn character to it. It’s not perfect, but I think it came out all right.
Always interested in hearing your thoughts. Please leave them below.
Copyright ©2008-2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Bird Boy – Waikiki
by James Howe on Mar.11, 2012, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm @ 300mm, ISO 640, 1/1000 sec at f/5.6)
A few weeks ago my family had the pleasure of visiting the island of Hawaii. The day after we arrived, I woke up early and took a walk along the Waikiki Beach area. The sun was just coming up and people were already out and about. At the far end of my walk there was a breakwater which extended from the beach out into the ocean. At the end of the breakwater was a little covered structure with several people enjoying the morning view. There was a group of kids with food that they were using to feed pigeons. I was lucky enough to get a few shots of the interaction between the birds and some of the children.
The processing of this image was done entirely in Lightroom. I did some minor cropping to eliminate some of the space at the top of the image and I used a bit of fill light, clarity and a post-crop vignette to create the final image.
Thanks for stopping by. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.
Copyright ©2011-2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
‘Ground Detection’ – USS Missouri
by James Howe on Feb.20, 2012, under black and white
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm @ 62mm, ISO 1250, 1/30sec @ f/5.6)
Today’s image was taken on a recent trip to Hawaii. While we were there, we took a tour of Pearl Harbor. Part of the tour included a visit to the USS Missouri. The Missouri is famous for several things. It was the largest battleship ever constructed. It also is the last battleship ever constructed. It was the place where the ‘Instrument of Surrender’ was signed by the US and Japan formally ending World War II. Finally, after being mothballed for several years, the ship was reactivated, reoutfitted and used in combat in support of Desert Storm. The ship has once again been put out of service but has found a home in Pearl Harbor on Battleship Row next to the sunken USS Arizona. I’m not exactly sure what this object is, but I thought it looked cool so I took a picture.
Processing was handled mostly by Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2 using one of the ‘Antique’ presets.
Comments and questions welcomed!
Copyright ©2011-2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Help Eric – Please Paint Me
by James Howe on Jan.26, 2012, under HDR
(Nikon D700, 16-35mm @ 25mm, ISO 200, 7 exposure HDR)
I was going through some older images the other day when I ran across this one which I had taken a couple of years ago. I posted a different angle of the same building here. I decided that I liked this angle as well, especially because of the writing on the side of the building, so I thought I would work with the image to see if I could come up with something I liked. The subject is what I presume to be an old gas station in Saginaw, Michigan. I took the shot at the end of a day trip to Saginaw. Saginaw has been through rough times since the 70’s and it was actually pretty depressing to visit. I grew up near by and was disappointed to see how many buildings in the downtown area had been torn down.
This image was created from 7 exposures, blended in Photomatix and then further processed in Photoshop using primarily Photo Tools from OnOne Software and Silver Efex Pro2 from Nik. I used a variety of effects from PhotoTools, brushing them in where I thought the effect looked nice. I created a black and white version and then backed off on the opacity to bring some of the color back to the image. This version of the shot has a colder look to it than the one I posted previously. The other one is probably more ‘accurate’, given that the sun was low in the sky creating a warm tone, but I think the colder tone of this one works as well.
Comments and questions always appreciated!
Copyright ©2010-2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Peninsula Paper Company – Ypsilanti, Mi
by James Howe on Jan.22, 2012, under HDR
(Nikon D700, 16-35mm @ 30mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/125 @ f/11)
This shot shows the old generator building for the Peninsula Paper Company of Ypsilanti, Michigan. The company closed years ago and the factory was demolished to make way for some apartments. I shot this shot of the old hydroelectric generator building from the site of the old paper factory. It was late in the day and I tried to get to this location before the sun set. I used my Photographers Ephemeris application to check out the sun angle and I knew that it would be shining on the build and I thought the evening light might look good on the building. The one downside with this sun position and time of year is the reddish color of the building tends to make the building blend in with the trees. Later in the year the sun might not be in such a nice position, but the green of the trees would help separate the building from the background.
I went through several steps to create the final image. The image started out as a wide angle shot, but I decided I wanted to focus more on the building. I also shot this as a 7 shot HDR, but after I processed the brackets in Photomatix I wasn’t thrilled with the result. After some experimentation I decided to use just two of the exposures and ran them through Photomatix to blend them. I then took the image into Photoshop. The first thing I did was use Color Efex Pro 4 to bring out some additional details. I used a ‘recipe’ that I created which uses the Tonal Contrast, Detail Extractor and Reflect Efex filters. The net result created a somewhat glassy look to the calm water and more details everywhere.
I thought image at this point was too colorful. The sunlit portions of the image looked good, but the water had a funky blue tone which just didn’t look right. I thought I might experiment with a black and white conversion, so I used Silver Efex Pro 2 to create an image based on one of the ‘antique’ presets. I adjusted the preset to make the grain less obvious, removed the borders and made some other adjustments. It looked nice, but I decided I wanted to have a bit of color so I reduced the opacity to let some color flow through. The last thing I did was to apply a Topaz Simplify filter. This created a painterly look to the entire image. I blocked out the effect on the trees and building using a layer mask, and I reduced the effect on the water.
I could have stopped at this point but I still wasn’t happy with the color. The building had actually become a little greenish. I played with color balance but couldn’t get anything to look right. I decided to start over. I followed similar steps to create a second version, but I managed to come up with an image where the building looked better, but I didn’t like the look of the water as much. As a final step, I opened both images in Photoshop as layers and had Photoshop line them up. Since they were from the same image there wasn’t a problem getting things to line up. I then masked out the water in one image to let the water show through from the other. I also decided that I didn’t link the wide angle, so I created a square crop to focus more on the building itself.
Always interested in hearing your thoughts or questions. Feel free to leave them below. Thanks!
Copyright ©2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved