Chrysler Building – New York City
by James Howe on Apr.16, 2012, under Architecture
(Nikon D800, 28-300mm at 250mm, Exposure 1/1000 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 320)
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 tried a couple of different ideas for processing. My initial thought was to try and get a nice clean black and white but I just couldn’t come up with something I liked. As I usually do, I looked through some of the presets in Silver Efex Pro2 to see if I could find a base look that I liked. Turns out it was the last preset, the ‘Pinhole’, which I liked the best. It created a nice strong vignette which drew my eye to the triangular windows, and it created an almost smoky look to the sky. I played with the default preset settings to improve the image, the default was too bright in the center and washed out some of the detail. What I find humorous is the fact that I used a $3000 digital SLR with medium format resolution to create a final image that looks like it was taken with nothing more than a pinhole camera. Of course, a pinhole camera would never have been able to get this shot.
Love to hear your thoughts on this one.
Copyright ©2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Pier 54 – New York City
by James Howe on Apr.15, 2012, under Travel
(Nikon D800, 28-300mm at 250mm, Exposure 1/250 sec @ f/11, ISO 250)
Anyone who knows history, or who has been reading any papers lately knows that this is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ‘unsinkable’ ship, Titanic. I’m visiting New York, and while I’m here I got the chance to see a bit of Titanic history in person. The ship was originally supposed to dock in New York city at Pier 59. Of course, the ship sank before it reached New York. The Cunard ship Carpathia managed to pick up the survivors and when they arrived at New York, they first visited Pier 59 to drop off the lifeboats and then returned to Pier 54 to drop off the passengers. Both Pier 54 and 59 were demolished years ago, Pier 59 is now just a bunch of stumps sticking out of the water, but Pier 54 at least still has this iron gate marking it’s entrance. If you look carefully, you can see writing which says Cunard and White Star Line. The liners merged after the Titanic disaster.
I took this shot from the High Line in New York City, and wonderful linear park which repurposes an old elevated subway line. My goal in processing the image was to help bring out the details of the lettering on the metal, as well as give the image a bit of an old time feeling. I used a combination of Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2 to do most of the work.
Certainly love to hear your thoughts on this, or if you have any more bits of history about the Pier.
Thanks!
Copyright ©2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
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