Hard Light
by James Howe on Nov.09, 2010, under University of Michigan
(Nikon D700, 70-200mm at 92mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/125 sec @ f/16)
For mid November in Michigan, this past Sunday was very pleasant. It was a bright sunny day and I took the opportunity to walk around Ann Arbor looking for interesting things to shoot. I went out mid-afternoon, which meant the sun was already at a low angle since the sun sets here around 5:20pm right now. I was hoping to get some architectural shots which took advantage of the raking light. The shot above shows the steps of Angell Hall on the campus of the University of Michigan. I liked the patterns the sun had created on the pillars and steps so I took this shot.
When I took the shot I had in my mind a conversion to black and white. While I liked the warmth of the color image, I thought black and white would be better suited to the high contrast image I had in mind. I used Nik’s Silver Efex Pro to do the conversion. My process was fairly simple. First, I started by looking at the presets. I didn’t see any preset that I cared for so I moved on to selecting a film type. After finding the film type, I played with some of the global settings. I gave the image more ‘structure’ to bring out more of the detail in the stone and concrete. I finished things off with a curves layer to darken and add additional contrast to the image. The original, out of camera shot, is shown below.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Sunday on the Diag
by James Howe on Nov.08, 2010, under Ann Arbor
(Nikon D700, 200mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/2000 sec @ f/2.8)
We had another nice late fall day here in Michigan, so I spent some of it wandering around Ann Arbor and on the campus of the University of Michigan. I was primarily using a 70-200 f2.8 lens that I had rented to play around with. The area I took this picture in is known as ‘The Diag’ since it is a large square area where several diagonal paths intersect. The shot was taken mid-afternoon, and with the recent switch to Standard time, the sun was coming in at low angle. With all the trees in the area, the sun made interested areas of light and shade. I had been primarily shooting campus architecture, but I saw these two people sitting next to the tree in the sunlight and I knew I had to take a shot. Since I was using the 70-200 f2.8 I figured this would be a great time to use the 2.8 to get the shallow DOF that I wanted.
When I first started to work on the image I created a slightly tighter crop than I had shot in the field. If you compare to the as-shot image shown below, you will notice that I cropped in from the left side and up from the bottom to let the trees to a better job of framing the subject. The image was also overly bright, but I was able to reduce the exposure to a reasonable level. I used a couple of different brushes in Lightroom to reduce the exposure on the tree trunk and on the people. From there I considered a couple different approaches to processing. First, simply leave it pretty much as shot. I liked the warm, late afternoon sunlight and the overall color of the image. I also considered a more ‘street’ look by converting the black and white. In the end I thought I would keep the color, but give the image more of a painted look. I used Topaz Simplify with the Buz Sim preset and then lowered the opacity to bring back more of the detail of the image. I really like what the Simplify filter does with leaves, grass and tree bark.
Please feel free to leave comments and constructive criticism.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Garden Path
by James Howe on Nov.04, 2010, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 16-35mm at 22mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @ f/11)
Ok, maybe it’s not really a garden path, but a path none the less. This shot was taken at Traverse City Commons, also known as the old Traverse City State Mental Hospital also known as the Northern Michigan Asylum. The hospital buildings and grounds are being converted from decaying hulks into retail shops and residential condos. A few buildings have been converted, but there are many others that are still in rough shape. The image above shows one such cluster of buildings.
Processing on this image consisted of two main changes, cropping from horizontal to vertical, and conversion from color to black and white. The picture was shot with my 16-35mm lens and I originally thought that a wide shot would be interesting. While processing it, however, I noticed that the path made for an interesting element and the wide shot didn’t emphasize it enough. I cropped so that the image focuses more on the path that leads to one of the buildings. I converted the image using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro. After getting a basic conversion, I used some control points to brighten some of the vegetation as well as the path. I finished the image off with a bit of a vignette.
Comments or thoughts?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Ford Motor Company Building – Greenfield Village (HDR)
by James Howe on Oct.31, 2010, under Greenfield Village
(Nikon D700, 16mm fisheye, ISO 200, HDR 7 exposures @ f/16)
One of the best things about living in Michigan is when you get a warm, indian summer day in late October. The sun is starting to hang a bit lower in the sky and the afternoon light is terrific, particularly when coupled with blue sky and red or yellow leaves on the trees. Last weekend I spent an afternoon at Greenfield Village and the day just got better as the day went on. It was getting close to closing time at the museum and I was walking toward the entrance when I passed by the quarter-size replica of Ford’s original Mack Ave. plant. Something about the light on the building, the leaves in the tree and the clouds in the sky just compelled me to take this shot. I popped on my rental 16mm fisheye and set up my tripod to capture shots for an HDR image.
Processing consisted of taking the 7 exposures into Photomatix 4. It was breezy that day so I took advantage of the semi-manual method of anti-ghosting to remove the ghosting on the leaves. It worked fairly well. I only focused on the leaves in the main part of the image, if you look towards the edges I’m sure you will see blur/ghosting artifacts but with the fisheye it’s not a big part of the image. The Photomatix processing left the image a bit flat from a contrast perspective, so I finished things up in Photoshop with a bit of a bump in saturation and added some additional contrast using a curves layer. Overall I’m pleased with how it came out. Click the image to see it larger.
Your comments and feedback are always appreciated.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Northwest Airlines DC-3
by James Howe on Oct.29, 2010, under HDR
(Nikon D700, 16mm fisheye, ISO 200, 9 exposure HDR @ f/16)
On my recent excursion to Greenfield Village I made a stop next door at the Henry Ford Museum to shoot some of the indoor exhibits. One of the more impressive sights when you enter the main entrance is this Northwest Airlines DC-3 aircraft suspended from the ceiling. The Henry Ford Museum does not have a large collection of aircraft, but it does have a handful of interesting and historically significant aircraft in its collection.
I set up low to the floor using my rented 16mm fisheye in an attempt to get a dramatic angle on the plane. I shot 9 exposures, some of them were quite long, and then processed the images in Photomatix. I think the HDR processing did a terrific job with bringing out the grain in the wood floor but it also intensified the gold color cast which was caused by the floor. I debated about adjusting the white balance to make the plane less gold and more silver/chrome colored, but I decided that I liked the gold color cast.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.