Grand Hotel – Mackinac Island, Michigan
by James Howe on Sep.01, 2010, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 170-300mm at 86mm (10 shot panorama), ISO 500, Exposure 1/500 sec @f/16)
The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island is an impressive structure built by the Mackinac Island Hotel Company which was formed by a group including the Michigan Central Railroad, Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad, and the Detroit and Cleveland Steamship Navigation Company. The idea was to promote tourism to the island in northern Michigan and encourage people to travel using the railroads and steamships of the owning companies. The hotel boasts the longest porch. Of course, these days you have to pay $10 to walk on the porch if you aren’t a guest of the hotel. The hotel maintains some quaint traditions, such as requiring gentlemen to wear coats after 6:30 pm and women to wear dresses or pant suits. Other than the expense, its one of the reasons I’ve never stayed there.
In addition to the hotel building itself, the hotel has some fabulous and famous grounds. The pool and other areas of the hotel were featured in the 1947 film This Time For Keeps starring Jimmy Durante and Esther Williams is filmed on the island and at Grand Hotel. In 1980 the hotel was featured in the film ‘Somewhere in Time’ featuring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.
In keeping with the old time theme of the hotel, I decided to go for a vintage look for my image. The image itself was created from a 10 shots used to create a panorama. I processed the panorama in Photoshop and converted the image to black and white. After saving the image, I used the toning and vignette tools of Lightroom to add the sepia tone and strong vignette. The unaltered original panorama is seen below.
As always, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the image itself or the final processing.
This image can be purchased either by clicking the ‘Buy Print’ link under the image, or by visiting my Imagekind galleries, or at my Fine Art America galleries.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Burton Tower
by James Howe on Aug.30, 2010, under Architecture
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 240mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/2000 sec @ f/5.6)
One of the things I like to do in my spare time is wander around the University of Michigan campus looking for photo opportunities. It’s particularly nice in the late spring and summer when the students are away. Recently on one of my walks I took this shot of Burton Tower. I have a thing for high contrast and raking light and I liked how the sun was shining on the tower. I really would have preferred to take this shot from a higher point, but I didn’t have access to one so I simply backed up about as far as I could and then zoomed in on the upper portion of the tower.
My plan for this image was to produce something high contrast. I figured I would probably go black & white but I always explore both possibilities. After playing around, I decided black & white worked best. I also spent some time playing with the perspective. I wanted a more straight on shot, so I used the skew and scale tools to alter the perspective a bit. Finally, I took out some visible bits in the dark areas of the image, painting over them with a dark brush. A bit of a change from the original image seen below.
Thoughts or comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Middle Village
by James Howe on Aug.28, 2010, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 28-80mm at 28mm, ISO 2500, 7 exposures @ f/5.6)
My wife and I have been visiting the Good Hart area in northern lower Michigan on and off for many years. We used to rent a house on Lake Michigan in an area known as Middle Village. Almost across the road from the house we rented was an old, decaying structure. It wasn’t until this year that I actually bothered to take some pictures of it. Given the state of decay I wouldn’t be surprised if the building is gone in the next few years. Middle Village itself was originally an Ottawa Indian village. A Jesuit Mission was established at Middle Village in 1741 and was rebuilt by Native Americans in 1823. A church, built in 1889 and a cemetary remain. The church is still used during the summer. Some additional information about the area can be found here.
The image above is a 7 shot HDR that I took from a front window. I didn’t have a tripod so I used to window frame for support. After converting the 7 images to an HDR using Photomatix I tried some different processing ideas in Photoshop. I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the color version and I thought that black & white would suit the topic better so that’s what I went with.
I took several other shots of this building, including a couple from the outside. It’s interesting comparing the condition of the building in my shot below, with this shot taken by RPM-Photo, one of my Flickr contacts. His shot was taken in 2003 and the roof and sides of the building are in much better shape. It appears that someone has been stripping some of the siding off of the building. The image below is a double processed single image HDR. I created two virtual copies in Lightroom and processed one for the sky and one for the shadows. I then took both images into Photomatix 4 (beta). After processing I masked out the sky and used the one from my sky processed image because I thought the sky looked better.
If anyone has any additional information on the history of this building, or general feedback on the image itself, please feel free to add them to the comments below.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
The Tunnel
by James Howe on Aug.27, 2010, under Michigan
(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, Exposure 3 sec @ f/6.7)
I figured that after a series of asylum pictures it might be nice to do something completely different. This shot was taken a couple of years ago when my family and I returned from a trip. The picture shows the tunnel which connects Concourse C to the main McNamara Terminal at Detroit’s Metro Airport. The tunnel is quite interesting. There is ambient music playing in the background and they use continually change the color of the lights. There are two long moving sidewalks which pass by long panels of glass sculpture. It’s a really nice change of pace from the typical chaos found in airports.
The picture itself received virtually no processing other than to crop up from the bottom. I took another shot and did a bit more processing for a somewhat different feeling. It can be seen here
Love to hear your thoughts and feedback.
Copyright © 2007-2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
The Porch
by James Howe on Aug.25, 2010, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 16-35mm at 16mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/125 sec @ f/8.0)
This is another shot from the old Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City. The design of the building included fenced in porches at the end of each floors. I’m sure when the asylum was open they would wheel patients out here for some air, but that’s just speculation. To take this shot I backed as far as I could into the corner of the porch. With the colorful graffiti, my plan was to take enough shots for an HDR to emphasize the color.
I took seven exposures and created an HDR but I wasn’t entirely pleased with it. For one thing I didn’t have a tripod so this was done hand-held. When I processed the images, Photomatix did a good job of aligning the images but there were aspects of the image that just weren’t as sharp as I would have liked. For the image above, I took one of the middle exposures and processed it using Topaz Adjust. I bumped up the clarity and color and then used some layer masks to apply the effect locally. I used a couple curves layers to adjust the contrast and color a bit more. You can see the starting image below.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.