Ponce Cathedral
by James Howe on Apr.12, 2010, under Architecture
(Nikon D700, 16-35mm at 17mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/1000 sec @f/8.0)
My family and I just returned from a short vacation in Puerto Rico. We stayed in the San Juan area, but we took a trip to the south side of the island where we visited the city of Ponce. Ponce was an interesting experience because non of my family speaks Spanish (we can read some) and there was very little English spoken in Ponce. We didn’t have a good map of Ponce and the city has very tight streets. We spent some time in the town square where I took this picture of the Ponce Cathedral. The church itself is on the National Register of Historic Places as “Cathedral Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe of Ponce”.
Processing consisted of conversion to black & white with some perspective correction. The sky was quite blue so I darkened it during the conversion. The building was a light grey color although in this shot it looks more white. I might try some curves work to bring down the brightness of the building a bit to see what it looks like.
Comments welcome!
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
UMMA Interior
by James Howe on Mar.30, 2010, under Ann Arbor, Architecture
(Nikon D700, 14-24mm at 22mm, ISO 1600, Exposure 1/250 sec @f4.0)
This image shows one of the galleries in the new wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I really like the clean architecture of the new wing, very modernist. The new wing does a nice job of showcasing modern art.
Processing of this image was fairly simple. I used Lightroom to convert to black and white and I used a curves layer in Photoshop to add some toning. The image above shows the full crop, but I think there is also a nice square crop opportunity as well.
Other thoughts? Please leave a comment!
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Lines at the UMMA
by James Howe on Mar.29, 2010, under Ann Arbor, Architecture, University of Michigan
(Nikon D700, 14-24mm at 22mm, ISO 800, Exposure 1/500 sec @f/4.0)
This shot was taken in the new wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). I was drawn to this shot by all the lines. I just liked the way the railings around the staircase looked against the lines for the window frames in the background. It has a very mide-century modern feeling, even though the building was completed last year. In looking at the shot now, I think it would look better with a person sitting on the bench, maybe about 1/3 of the way in from the right side of the image. I think a person would add a nice ‘organic’ element to the strong geometric nature of the shot. I’m curious as to what other people might think.
Processing for this shot consisted mainly of converting to black and white and adjusting the cropping. In the process I brightened up a few areas which were pretty dark in the original image.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Light Bulb Machine
by James Howe on Mar.25, 2010, under Mechanical
(Nikon D700, 50mm, ISO 2000, Exposure 1/125 sec @f/1.8)
This is another shot I took at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The picture shows a machine which was used to manufacture light bulbs. The museum lighting is pretty dark and I didn’t have my tripod with me so I bumped the ISO to 2000 to get this shot. While the noise levels even at this ISO aren’t too bad, my thought when I took this was to create more of a ‘artsy’ image with heavy processing using Topaz Simplify. I was more interested in the shapes in the shot than trying to capture the machine in a more realistic fashion.
Processing on was primarily done using Topaz Simplify. They have a preset called ‘Buzz Sim’ which does a really nice job of smoothing out the image in a very interesting manner. Any noise in the image is effectively smoothed and in some cases adds additional character to the image, similar to a painting, but with more detail.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Edison Dynamo
by James Howe on Mar.22, 2010, under Mechanical
(Nikon D700, 50mm, ISO 800, Exposure 1/30 sec @f/2.0)
This shot shows a 200 Kilowatt Dynamo from the Edison General Electric Schenectady Works. This machine is on permanent display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Henry Ford Museum has a wonderful collection of historical artifacts but I’m particularly drawn to the large generators they have on display. The size, color and design of these machines is truly impressive.
Processing was fairly minimal. I used Lightroom to adjust the exposure and used the Topaz Adjust Filter in Photoshop to add just a bit of additional sharpness and clarity to the image.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.