St. Peter’s Cathedral – Marquette, Michigan
by James Howe on Jul.15, 2011, under Architecture
(Nikon D700, 17-35mm at 24mm, ISO 250, 5 exposures @ f/11)
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.
The image was taken in the morning to capture the light on the face of the church. The church faces north and morning in the summer is the best time to capture the light on the front. The 5 exposures were done hand-held, but I was resting the camera on top of utility box to stabilize it. Processing started in Photomatix but I finished in Photoshop with some help of PhotoTools. I used a layer created from Silver Efex Pro2 in Luminosity mode to bring out more detail, particularly in the sky, but this also resulted it a lot of noise so I backed off on the opacity. The image still has more noise than I would like so I may try to process it again to see if I can avoid it.
Thoughts or comments?
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
’58 Cadillac Eldorado
by James Howe on Jul.13, 2011, under Automobiles
(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 33mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, 1/400 sec @ f/3.2)
I was spending some time going through my Lightroom catalog looking for some interesting images to post to my Google+ profile when I came across this image that I took in 2008. The car is a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham and it was on display at the annual Eyes on Design car show held in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan. I don’t think I ever posted this image anywhere before, so here it is now!
If you compare the image to the raw image below, you will notice that a few things have been done to get to the final version. One of the first things I did was to remove all the grass surrounding the car, simply painting over it with a black brush. I used a couple of different HSL layers to remove some of the color which was reflected in the chrome. I wanted the chrome to look more silver than either green or blue. I used Topaz Simplify to give the body a somewhat HDR look, but I masked the effect elsewhere. Finished it off with a bit of sharpening and that was it.
Please feel free to leave any feedback you might have below. Thanks!
Copyright © 2008-2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Ringside
by James Howe on Jul.12, 2011, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 195mm, ISO 200, 1/250 sec @ f/11)
Over the 4th of July weekend, I spent a couple of days in Marquette, Michigan. We were in Marquette to check out the campus of Northern Michigan University as a possible university for our youngest son. The town is quite interesting and has a number of interesting older buildings with some terrific architecture. When we got there, I took a short walk around the town. As I was wandering around town I saw this cool sign for Ringside Fitness, a local fitness facility and thought it would make a nice image. For processing I started with one of the darker presets from Silver Efex Pro 2 and gave the image a rough border. I wanted to give the image a bit of an old time grungy feeling.
Thoughts?
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Ore Dock
by James Howe on Jul.08, 2011, under HDR
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 300mm, ISO 250, 5 Exposures sec @ f/5.6)
The ore dock in Marquette, Michigan is a pretty imposing structure. It’s probably at least two freighters in length and is this lovely mass of repeating concrete and metal elements. I took several shots, some wide, and some close-up. For this image, I shot 5 exposures to use for an HDR image since I thought that the HDR might really bring out the character in the concrete and metal. When processing, I also worked on a black and white version which I might post either here or on my 500px page. I think black and white works really well with this shot to give it an industrial look, but I like the look and color of the rusty concrete in the color version.
As I mentioned above, the image was created from 5 exposures, using Photomatix as a base (seen below). After getting an initial tone-mapping in Photomatix, I used a handful of actions from PhotoTools to finish the image.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
‘Billmaier’
by James Howe on Jul.07, 2011, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 70-300 at 300mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @f/8.0)
This past weekend my wife and youngest son took a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to visit the campus of Northern Michigan University. NMU is located in Marquette, Michigan, which is a terrific little town. The town is located on the shores of Lake Superior and has a wonderful collection of historic buildings and interesting sights. This shot was taken down in what is known as the lower harbor. The lower harbor has an old ‘ore dock’ which is a large structure used to load taconite pellets on to large ships. Marquette has two of these docks, one is still in use. The image shows a tug boat parked in front of the dock.
Processing consisted mainly of two steps, the first step was simply to crop the image down to focus more attention on the boat. The second step was to use Topaz Simplify to create a picture which looks more like a painting. There are certain types of images that Simplify works well with, and I think this is one of them. It does interesting things with color and texture that I think suit this image. The only adjustment I made after applying the filter was to mask out its effect on the name of the boat. I wanted the name to be legible.
Have comments? Please leave them below!
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.