Michigan Central Station
by James Howe on Oct.23, 2011, under HDR
(Nikon D700, Sigma 15mm Fisheye, ISO 200, 5 Exposures @ f5.6)
I’ve been finding it difficult to get out and shoot new material for a variety of reasons, but today was such a nice day I decided to make an effort to get out and at least shoot something. I decided to take a short drive into Detroit to check out the progress on the Michigan Central Station. The owners are finally doing something to at least stabilize the building. Mostly this involves tightening security around the station to keep people out, removing the broken windows and putting in new windows, and working on the roof. Progress is slow, but they have definitely made some progress at least regarding the windows on the lower level. They haven’t actually replaced any that I could see, but they have removed the broken glass.
The shot was taken with my 15mm Sigma Fisheye. I’m not sure I really care for the bowed effect in this shot and debated about letting Lightroom do a lens correction, but I decided to keep it as shot. I took a series of 5 shots, hand held, and combined them using Photomatix to create an initial HDR image (seen below). I then took the HDR image into Photoshop and used OnOne Software’sPhotoTools to play with the image. I didn’t have any particular look in mind when I started, I was just trying out some filters, mostly from the HDR collection, to see what effect it had on various parts of the image. If I saw something I liked, I would alter the opacity and brush it in to the places where I thought it looked good, and removed it from places that it didn’t. I then used the PhotoFrame tool to add an ‘Acid Burn’ edge to the image. I finished the image off with Topaz Simplify which I used mostly on the sky and to a lesser extent the rest of the image.
Love to hear your comments on this one.
Copyright ©2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Got Candy?
by James Howe on Oct.12, 2011, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 100mm, ISO 800, Exposure 1/2000 sec @ f/5.6)
Last Christmas, my family and I took a Caribbean cruise which included a stop on St. Martaan. The island has a new port area designed to hold the numerous cruise ships which visit the island. I believe when we visited there must have been 5 or 6 ships in port. From the port area you can take a water taxi in to the main town. When you get off of the taxi you are immediately confronted with all sorts of things to buy. I took this picture of a small shop because I really liked the look of the candy advertisements agains the bright yellow siding of the building. There is no ‘before’ picture this time because this image came straight out of the camera.
Copyright ©2010-2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
St. Nicholas Church, Ann Arbor (a second look)
by James Howe on Oct.04, 2011, under Architecture
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 100mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @f/11)
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. The shot you see above was the result of using the ‘Soft Landscape’ recipe which comes with the product. I thought it did a nice job with the vignette as well as the detail in the clouds and brickwork of the church. The original image (shown below) was definitely flat and relatively lifeless and I was happy with how the final shot came out. I’d certainly be happy to hear what others think.
Feel free to leave your comments and questions below.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Chelsea Clocktower and Glazier Stove Welfare Building
by James Howe on Oct.01, 2011, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 28mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/125 @ f/16)
This is a shot taken recently in Chelsea, Michigan home to Chelsea Milling, makers of Jiffy Mix and also the home town of Jeff Daniels, whose family owns Chelsea Lumber Company. The main subject in this shot is the Clocktower, which was built by the Glazier Stove Company which once operated the worlds largest oil stove factory on the site. The Clocktower building was once the tallest structure in Washtenaw County. The tower served the dual purpose of holding a 20,000 gallon (76,000 liter) water tank for fires and for keeping time. While the Clocktower no longer serves as a water tower, but the old water tank is still encased within the tower just below the clock faces. The building just to the right of the clocktower is the Welfare Building built by the Glazier Stove Company. The building was built for the welfare of the employees of the Glazier Stove Company. According to a report in the Chelsea Standard on November 2, 1905: “This building will be given over entirely to the employes (sic) of the factory. It will contain reading rooms, supplied with the best current literature, swimming pool, shower baths, separate lockers for the men’s clothes and there will also be a fine, thoroughly equipped gymnasium in charge of a competent instructor.” Additional information about this site can be found here
I’ve taken shots of this part of Chelsea before but I really liked what the clouds were doing that day so I decided to get another shot. Out of camera, the image seemed a bit soft, so I used Topaz Detail to bring out more details. I pumped up the ‘large’ details just to the point where halos started to appear and then I backed it off. I then took the image in to Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4 and played around with some of the options in that application. I ended up using one of their ‘recipies’ called Soft Landscape which did a nice job adding a bit of vignette and making some other subtle changes. I finished things off by sharpening.
As always, I welcome your comments and questions.
Copyright ©2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Gears
by James Howe 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