Through the Wire – Michigan Central Depot
by James Howe on Oct.11, 2010, under Detroit
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 112mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/30 sec @ f/11)
The Michigan Central Depot in Detroit, Michigan is such a perfect analogue to the city of Detroit. It was once a beautiful place but it has been allowed to decay. The building has been threatened with demolition for years, but so far it remains standing. Some good things are happening, at least in the surrounding area. Private organizations are working to clean up the park in front of the station. In addition, they are buying up buildings and either demolishing or attempting to rehabilitate them, depending on their condition. The depot itself is a favorite location for film shoots and has been featured in movies such as ‘The Island’ and ‘Transformers’ among others. It’s a shame that the best feature of the building is it’s decay, but if it helps raise awareness about the building that is probably a good thing.
The image above was taken through the fencing which surrounds the station. You can see that the station was once a thing of great beauty, a station built in the Beaux Arts style of the early 20th Century. Processing was limited to making some minor perspective corrections and converting the image to black and white. I used Photoshop with Nik’s Silver Efex Pro to do the conversion. When processing, I tried to make sure that the interior of the station was still visible. It may be hard to see at a smaller size, however. You can compare the finished image above, with the raw shot, shown below.
For more information on the Depot, visit the Michigan Central Station Preservation Society on Facebook and www.savemichigancentral.com
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Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Crank Handle
by James Howe on Oct.05, 2010, under HDR
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 200mm, ISO 200, HDR 7 Exposures @ f/5.6)
This is another in a series of HDR images that I shot at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Once again the location was the Armington & Sims machine shop. I love the look of the old, oiled, metal of the vintage machinery. I think this type of material really works well with HDR. My goal was to really focus in on one element of the machine, in this case a crank handle, possibly used to operate a vise-like component, but I’m not sure. In comparison with one of the ‘as-shot’ images, I think this shot really brings out the details.
Processing once again started with 7 exposures taken in to Photomatix 4 (beta). Additional contrast was added using Topaz Adjust in Photoshop.
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Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Machinist’s Cabinet
by James Howe on Oct.02, 2010, under HDR
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 98mm, ISO 3200, 7 Exposure HDR @ f/16)
The Armington & Sims machine shop at Greenfield Village is a great place for lovers of old tools and machinery. I also like the variety of old wooden items they have in the shop. This picture shows a cabinet which is used to contain a variety of small parts. The cabinet sits behind a railing which made it tricky to get a good shot. I ended up taking this at a slight angle to the cabinet when my intention was to shoot it straight on. As a result, the image had just a bit of skew to it that I didn’t care for so I ended up making some perspective corrections in Photoshop. This end of the building was rather dark and the outside light didn’t help much. I didn’t have a remote control for my camera with me so I was manually taking the brackets. The D700 has the ability to shoot a sequence of brackets by just holding down the shutter, but when the brackets take several seconds to shoot, plus a matching several seconds of noise reduction processing, holding the button for all 7 images is a bit difficult, and just begs to introduce additional vibration in the shot. To avoid this to some extent, I bumped the ISO to 3200. This at least kept my longer brackets to a manageable length. Next time I go I’ll make sure I have my cordless remote and I’ll have an easier time getting the brackets I want.
As mentioned, some of the processing involved doing some perspective correction. For this I typically just use Free Transform and skew rather than using Lens Correction. I took the images into Photomatix and did most of the work in that tool. After processing the brackets, I boosted the local contrast a bit more using Topaz Adjust. Some final sharpening and a bit of edge darkening in Lightroom completed the image. By way of comparison, a mid-bracket version of the sequence is shown below.
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Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Armington & Sims Machine Shop
by James Howe on Oct.01, 2010, under HDR
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 45mm, ISO 200, 6 exposure HDR @ f/11)
The Armington & Sims machine shop in Greenfield Village was built in 1929. It was named after a maker of steam engines in Providence, Rhode Island. The building houses a working machine shop which would have been used as a ‘job’ shop to build and repair various parts for industry. The shop was originally powered by steam, with the steam engine sending its power to the machinery via a system of belts and pulleys. If you look near the top of the image, you can see a series of pulley wheels and their belts which power the machines to the right. Today the shop it powered by electricity. While primarily an exhibit of what a machine shop would have been like in the day, the shop is still used to produce parts for items needed in the village and museum.
The image was created primarily in Photomatix from a combination of 6 exposures (would have been 7, but I miscounted when I took the shot). As you can see below, the image was originally a vertical shot, but I thought a more focused crop looked better. After processing was completed in Photomatix, I used the Topaz Adjust tool to add some additional microcontrast.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Detroit & Mackinac Caboose – Black and White
by James Howe on Sep.30, 2010, under HDR
p class=’exif’>(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 78mm, ISO 1250, HDR 7 Exposures @ f/8.0)
As promised yesterday, here is the black and white version of yesterday’s color HDR of the Detroit & Mackinac Caboose from Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Processing was quite simple. I took the image produced by Photomatix into Photoshop and ran Topaz Adjust to increase clarity. I then used Silver Efex Pro to convert the image to black and white. I went with a film style with little grain and added a bit of a vignette. I finished it off with a light sepia tone.
I’d be interested to hear which image you prefer, or any other comments you may have.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.