Lenawee County Courthouse Detail
by James Howe on May.10, 2011, under Architectural Details
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 122mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/1000 sec @f/8)
This shot shows some of the details of the Lenawee County Courthouse that was the subject of yesterday’s post. I shot this from directly in front of the building using my 70-300mm lens. Some of the key details are the patterns in the roofing shingles, the terra-cotta reliefs and all the curves and arches. Lots of great symmetry.
Most of the processing for this image was done with Silver Efex Pro 2 which handled the black and white conversion, the toning and the edge treatment. One little thing that I did was adjust the positioning of the building. If you look at the raw image, you will see that the building isn’t quite centered in the frame. There is more of the terra-cotta relief in the lower left than the lower right. When I converted to black and white, I used one of the built in border effects provided by Silver Efex Pro 2. I noticed that the border cut off part of the image. I figured I could add to the border on the right side and let the Silver Efex 2 border cover it up, while keeping more of the image content. I expanded my canvas to the right and used content aware fill to fill in the space (which for this image did a remarkable job, even though the content is mostly covered up) I then took the image into Silver Efex Pro 2 where the border effect pretty much covered up the expanded area of the canvas. The final effect was just want I wanted, however. The image now appears more centered, with roughly equal amounts of terra-cotta relief showing up on the left and right.
Thoughts?
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Lenawee County Courthouse – Adrian, Michigan
by James Howe on May.09, 2011, under Architecture
(Nikon D700, 16-35mm at 32mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/500 sec @f/8)
A couple of years ago I visited Adrian, Michigan and ran across this wonderful old courthouse building. I didn’t have a camera with me at the time and I’ve always wanted to come back and take some pictures. I’m only about an hour’s drive away from Adrian, but I never found the time to get back until this past weekend. The weather was sunny and pleasant and I thought the mid-morning light might look good on the building, so I packed up my camera and drove to Adrian.
It was somewhat of a challenge to find a good angle on the building. The north side was interesting but had too many power/telephone lines in the way. Shooting from the front was a bit boring. This angle is from the south east side and presents the cleanest look although the tree on the right blocks some of the building. Another item I had to deal with was a large radio tower which is across the street from the courthouse. From the angle I shot this picture at, the tower would have appeared just to the right of the tallest part of the building. I rearranged my composition to place the tower completely behind the building. Now the only things in the image that I don’t care for are the two signs. I made an attempt to clone out the signs, but gave up.
The building itself was built in 1885 and replaced a courthouse which had burned down in 1852. The architecture is Romanesque and features some wonderful terra-cotta trim.
Processing for the image was pretty simple. I performed a little perspective correction and increased the contrast just a bit as the raw image was a little too flat. Thats about it.
As always, leave any comments or questions below.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Packard Steering Wheel
by James Howe on May.05, 2011, under Automobiles
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 230mmmm, ISO 320, Exposure 1/125 sec @f/8.0)
With springtime comes the opening of the Gilmore Car Museum, a great car museum located between Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, Michigan. The museum has a great collection of automobiles from virtually any time period. In addition to their regular displays, they also hold various car shows on their grounds. This shot was taken late last spring at the 2010 Classic Car Collectors of America (CCCA) show. This show features a wonderful collection of wonderfully restored classic automobiles. This particular image shows the interior of a 1940 Packard Touring Sedan.
In processing this shot I wanted to focus on the graphical elements and less on the specific details of the interior. I liked the look of the circles created by the steering wheel, as well as the design of the spokes. After some minor corrections, I used Silver Efex Pro 2 to create a darker image which highlighted the graphical elements. I used one of the preset borders to give the image the finished edge.
Let me know what you think. Feel free to leave comments or questions below.
Copyright © 2010-2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Chelsea Grain Elevator
by James Howe on May.03, 2011, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 50mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/1000 sec @f/8)
We’ve been having a pretty blah spring here in Michigan, lots of cool rainy days. It hasn’t exactly motivated me to go out and shoot. Sunday started out this way, but in the afternoon the sun started to come out and the temperatures warmed up. I decided I might as well go out for a little while and see if I could find something interesting to shoot. I spent a little time in Chelsea, Michigan shooting around the train station and old clocktower they have there, but none of those pictures really thrilled me. On the way home, I went past this grain elevator. I like grain elevators, they have an interesting industrial quality to them. I stopped and took a few shots including the one you see above.
Processing for this image took a few steps. First, the image was created from 5 handheld exposures merged together using Photomatix. In the images below, you can see the raw shot on the left, which has the ‘normal’ exposure, and the image on the right is the HDR produced in Photomatix. I only used Photomatix to do the blending, and relied on some Photoshop filters to take the image the rest of the way. The next thing I did was use OnOne’s PhotoTools to add some more interest to the shot. I started with the Daily Multi-Vitamin and then went to the HDR effects. I used a combination of effects at various opacities to add both gold and blue/green tones to the image.
At this point I had an image that I liked, but I often times like to see what an image might look like in black and white. At a minimum, you can get some interesting additional texture by applying a black and white layer in luminosity mode, so I took the image into Silver Efex Pro 2. There I played with the structure and contrast a bit. I also played with the vignetting. The image looked interesting with a reverse vignette, but I decided on adding a normal vignette instead. Back in Photoshop I switched to luminosity mode and really liked what I saw. The addd structure brought out more detail in the grain silos and the vignette gave the clouds the look of toasted marshmallows. I liked it. so that’s what I posted!
Would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this one.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
St. Nicholas Church – Ann Arbor
by James Howe on Apr.29, 2011, under Architecture
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 100mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @f/11)
This is a shot of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I drive by this church frequently, and I’ve always liked the way it looks when the sun is shining on it in the afternoon. I’m a big fan of contrast and the sharp angles of the building combined with the angle of the sun creates an interesting look.
My goal in processing was to bring out the strong contrast that attracts me to this building. I deliberately darkened the dark side and brightened the brighter side to increase the contrast. I used Silver Efex Pro 2 for the black and white conversion which also helped bring out some of the elements in the sky.
Thoughts? Leave them below!
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.