World Financial Center Winter Garden – New York City
by James Howe on Sep.20, 2010, under Architecture
(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm (2x crop factor) at 10mm, ISO 100, Exposure 1/160 sec @ f/6.3)
My wife and I spent some time in New York for our anniversary last year. One of the areas we visited was the financial district, particularly the area around the World Trade Center area. This shot was taken in the winter garden portion of the World Financial Center. The day outside was sort of cool and somewhat rainy, but the winter garden was quite nice. When I looked up at the ceiling, I knew I had to get a shot of it. I was really taken in by the pattern of glass agains the gray sky. The shot itself was taken with my Olympus E-3 and the 7-14mm lens (which has a 2x crop factor). I sat on some steps and leaned back to get as much of the glass area in the ceiling as possible, in particular I wanted to get the curved area.
My main goal for processing was to make sure that the pattern was the primary focus of the image, not the actual details of the structure. The main changes to the raw image were to convert to black and white and perform some minor perspective correction.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
1935 Duesenberg SJ564
by James Howe on Sep.14, 2010, under Automobiles
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 70mm, ISO 250, Exposure 1/1000 sec @ f/8.0)
I seem to be in a black and white mood of late. This is a picture of one of my favorite cars at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corner, Michigan (between Battle Creek and Kalamazoon) This picture was taken at the 2010 Classic Car Club of America show held at the Gilmore. The car is a 1935 Dusenberg SJ564 Convertible Couple. I’ve always been fond of mid-30’s automobiles, particularly those with the exposed chrome exhausts. Duesenbergs have them as well as some model Auburns and Cords. All great designs.
For processing I converted to black and white in Lightroom and applied a duo-tone. I added some vignetting and finished up with some minor cloning in Photoshop. My goal was to create an image with a vintage look to it. I tried adding some grain in Lightroom as well, but I didn’t like the way it looked. I think the black and white suits the subject matter than the color version you see below.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Guggenheim, NYC
by James Howe on Sep.10, 2010, under Architecture
(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 1250, Exposure 1/30 sec @ f/4.0)
I don’t get to New York as often as I would like to any more. I used to be able to count on at least a couple of trips each year for work, but not so much any more. This particular image was taken a year ago when my wife and I visited New York for our wedding anniversary. It was the first time I had visited the museum and I certainly hope to get back to see it again. It was a cloudy and somewhat rainy day when we visited which meant that the skylight above was mostly white, instead of blue. The interior was not extremely bright, so I had to bump my ISO to 1250 to get a reasonable shutter speed. Unfortunately the camera I was using at the time, an Olympus E-3, doesn’t do well at higher ISO settings. I love the camera, I just wish it did better at higher ISO.
Processing for this image consisted mainly of some noise reduction in Lightroom and conversion to black and white. I bumped the contrast a bit in Photoshop and also brightened the image somewhat. I didn’t want to brighten the skylight area so I ended up masking the curve in that area. You can see in the raw image below that the color balance is a bit yellow. I should have shot my Whibal card to have something to compare it with.
Comments and feedback are welcome and encouraged.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
North Quad – University of Michigan
by James Howe on Sep.07, 2010, under Architecture
(Nikon D700, 24mm PC-E, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @ f/11)
For the past few days I’ve been playing with a Nikon 24mm PC-E lens. I like to shoot architecture and I thought it would be fun to try a lens which would let me do some perspective correction in camera rather than in Photoshop. I still have a lot to learn about using this lens, but I really like it (which I could afford one). This shot of the new North Quad dormitory on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor was taken with this lens. I was lazy and shot this hand held. With a 24mm lens I was able to capture most of the building without tilting the camera too much, and then I used the shift capability to reduce any keystoning. The nice thing about being able to do this optically is you keep the full resolution of the image rather than stretching/compressing pixels in Photoshop.
This image started out as a color image (seen below), but with a deep blue sky I thought it might look nice converted to black and white with the blue sky almost black. I bumped the yellows and greens to create something which almost looks infrared. I ended up cropping some of the signs from the left side but other than that the image is pretty much untouched. Seeing this shot in color make me think I need to come back here in the fall when the trees turn colors.
What do you think, do you prefer the black and white version, or the color version? Other feedback is also welcome.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Morning at the Grand Hotel
by James Howe on Sep.02, 2010, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 200mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @f/16)
This is another shot of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. While spending time on the island, I took a walk one morning hoping to get a morning shot of the hotel. The morning had been cloudy and rainy but as I left my hotel room the sky started to clear up. The island isn’t very big, particularly the ‘downtown’ area, so it didn’t take me long to walk from my hotel across town and up the hill to get to the Grand Hotel. I took a few shots as the sun came out from behind the clouds but I noticed that the flags which normally adorn the porch weren’t flying. Somehow it made the hotel look a little to plain. As I was shooting, I noticed these gentlemen starting to put the flags out on the porch. I thought it made for an interesting shot.
As you can see from the as shot image, processing mainly consisted of converting to black and white. I’d like to say that I am continually impressed with my Nikon 70-300 f4.5/5.6G ED lens. It was relatively inexpensive, a little over $500, but it is incredibly sharp. While working on this image I noticed that I could really see the detail in the paint on the porch posts as well as other areas of the image. I like sharp images and this lens typically does a terrific job for me.
Comments welcome.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.