Rocketship
by James Howe on May.26, 2011, under black and white
(Nikon D700, 50mm, ISO 200, 5 exposures @ f/8)
On my way home from my visit to Fayette, Ohio (and Hal’s Garage) I headed up highway 109 towards Michigan. Just before I got to the Michigan border, I came across this grain elevator at a farm. What caught my eye was how rusty the thing was. Most of these things are really shiny aluminum, but not this one. The road didn’t have a really wide shoulder and there was a bit of a drop off to a ditch so I didn’t have a lot of room to pull over and get a good shot. I ended up pulling over and shooting this from my car window.
I shot five exposures, thinking that I might want to create an HDR, but after looking at the tonemapped image (seen below), I decided to see what it might look like in black and white. I didn’t really like the truck that was parked along the right side of the image, so I tried to find some way to minimize it. I’ve been attracted to the various ‘Antique Plate’ effects in Silver Efex Pro 2 and found that using a reverse vignette did a nice job of eliminating the truck and drawing more attention to the main subject. I played with the contrast and structure to get the level of detail that I wanted, and ended up with the image you see above.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Hal’s Garage
by James Howe on May.25, 2011, under black and white
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 125mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/500 sec @f/8)
In my quest to find new material to shoot I took a short road trip into northern Ohio this weekend. I had seen a picture of this structure posted by one of my Flickr contacts and I thought it would be interesting to see it myself. I headed down to Toledo, Ohio, where I picked up US-20 heading west. Once I got out of the Toledo area, the road opened up to wide open farmland. I was hoping I might see an old barn or two, and I was really hoping I might find one with a painted “Mail Pouch” tobacco sign, but no such luck. I did see one barn which I’m pretty sure used to have a sign painted on one end, but it had been freshly painted over. Anyway, I pressed on until I reached Fayette, Ohio, a small town in western Ohio. There, on the eastern side of town, is “Hal’s Garage”. My understanding of this building is that it is just a private garage, not a working garage, but I still think it is pretty cool. I love the old signs and the way trunks of cars are used as awnings.
My thought for processing was always to create a black and white image, but conversion posed a couple of challenges. I wanted the yellow Shell sign to show up, but as I played with various sensitivities it tended to blend in with the wall color. It took a little tweaking to separate it from the background, but that caused the Speedway sign to be too dark. I solved this problem by making an initial black and white conversion with Silver Efex Pro 2 and then masking out the Speedway sign. I then used a simple Photoshop black and white layer to do the conversion on the Speedway sign. The one thing I wanted to keep was the rust spots and streaks and in order to do this I had to lighten the blue background a bit.
Got comments or questions? Feel free to leave them below.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Webberville Feed & Grain
by James Howe on May.24, 2011, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 70-300 at 210mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/500 sec @f/8.0)
Continuing my quest to find interesting grain elevators to shoot, I present this image taken of a feed and grain store located in Webberville, Michigan. I was actually passing through Webberville on my way to find an old grain elevator that I had seen during a Flickr search. I hadn’t really planned on stopping in Webberville, but I figured, what the heck maybe there would be something interesting to shoot. The first thing you see when you approach Webberville from the highway is the large Archer Daniels Midland elevator and complex. I took some shots of it, but the picture I really wanted to get would have been difficult since it would have involved shooting from just outside of the security gate. I really didn’t feel like dealing with security so I passed on that shot. However, I had noticed just down the tracks a bit, there was another, smaller elevator. I managed to find the road which led to this feed and grain store. It wasn’t quite as rustic as I would have liked, but parts of the building had an interesting character. I took a few different shots from different angles and I liked this one the best.
The processing on this one is somewhat interesting (at least I think so). Normally I would use something like PhotoTools or Topaz Adjust to bring out extra detail in the image. In this case, I did the opposite. I used Topaz Simplify with the BuzSim preset to remove detail. It created an image which looked more like it was painted rather than photographed. I then took the image into Silver Efex Pro 2 and converted to black and white and added the ragged border.
As always, feel free to leave comments or questions below.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
“It’s the Hops!”
by James Howe on May.23, 2011, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 50mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/500 sec @f/8.0)
Recently I’ve been in a bit of a shooting slump and I’m trying to come up with little projects which might help me out. I’ve always had a fascination with old grain elevators and seeing some shots from other people got me inspired to do some hunting to find structures which might be interesting to shoot. I decided to search Flickr to see what others have found to help focus my effort instead of driving aimlessly about in search of something I may never find. I happened to run across an image of the elevator taken in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I live nearby and I knew approximately where this elevator was located, so I decided to check it out this past weekend and ended up with the shot you see above. I particularly like the sign for the Frog Island Brewery.
Processing involved using Photo Tools and Topaz Adjust to bring out some of the details in the old concrete, and Silver Efex Pro 2 to do the conversion to black and white.
Love to know what you think.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
University of Michigan IM Building – Ann Arbor
by James Howe on May.16, 2011, under Ann Arbor
(Nikon D700, 16-35mm at 27mm, ISO 200, 5 bracketed exposures @f/8.0)
We had some nice weather last week and all around I saw trees flowering and leafing out. I decided to take a quick drive around the campus of the University of Michigan to see where there might be a good combination of architecture and flowering landscape. The shot above shows the Intramural Building with a nice line of flowering trees. Not sure what kind of trees they are, but they looked nice.
The building is hard to get in good light since it faces pretty much North. In winter the sun is typically behind it, and in summer trees obscure the sun until it is high in the sky which tends to leave the front of the building dark. I shot this image into the morning sun and took 5 exposures to produce and HDR image. I wasn’t paying enough attention and managed to get a large lens flare right in the main subject area of the image which I don’t particularly care for. After processing the 5 shots in Photomatix, I did some work on the color version in Photoshop, but I found the flare to be too annoying. I took the image into Silver Efex Pro 2 and came up with a nice vintage looking image which I think suits the age of the building. The sepia treatment also reduced the visibility of the flare to a point where it no longer bothers me.
Interested in hearing your feedback on this one. Feel free to leave comments and suggestions below.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.