Campus Martius – Downtown Detroit
by James Howe on Jul.30, 2009, under Architecture, Michigan
(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 10mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/200 sec @ f/8.0)
This shot of downtown Detroit, Michigan was taken from Campus Martius park during Scott Kelby’s 2nd Annual Worldwide Photowalk. The tall building in the center is the Penobscot building and is one of the more recognizable buildings in Detroit.
The finished image is the result of quite a bit of work in Photoshop. I took this shot with my ultra-wide angle lens at 10mm (2x crop factor). I wasn’t able to get the camera parallel to the buildings so there was a bit of distortion because I had to shoot slightly upward. I used Free Transform -> Skew to fix most of that distortion. I then scaled things up a bit because correcting the skew made the buildings a little too short.
The lawn area at the bottom of the picture had a bunch of tables and chairs which I found distracting so the first thing I did was to clone them out. I then applied the Topaz Simplify filter to the image which gave the image a more painterly look. I masked out the effect on the buildings, leaving it for the sky and ground. I then used a couple different black and white conversion layers to convert the image to black and white. I used multiple conversion layers because i wanted to emphasize/darken the same color in different ways in different parts of the image. I wanted to darken green/yellow in the bottom, but I didn’t want the trees to be too dark. I finished things up with a platinum toning curves layer.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Check out more of my images from the Detroit Photowalk here.
Spirt of Detroit
by James Howe on Jul.22, 2009, under Michigan
(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 44mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/200 sec @ f/7.1)
This shot, taken on Scott Kelby’s Second Annual Worldwide Photowalk, shows the statue known as The Spirit of Detroit. The statue was created by Marshall Fredericks, who is responsible for many pieces of art in Southeastern Michigan (and other places as well).
I have seen many shots of this statue, but have never been up close to it. It had recently been restored and I was amazed at just how green the statue was in the sunshine. I tried to capture that but I still don’t think this image really captures the intensity of the color. The statue is much wider, but for this shot I wanted to capture the gaze of the ‘spirit’ as he looks at the family.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Please check out this slideshow of some of my other images from the photowalk. Let me know your favorite!
Forbidden Garden
by James Howe on Jul.19, 2009, under Architecture, Michigan
(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/20 sec @ f/11.0)
This shot shows the Wintergarden portion of the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan. The RenCen is also the world headquarters of General Motors. This is another picture that I took on this years Worldwide Photowalk organized by Scott Kelby and friends. The RenCen was the starting and ending point for our walk. We finished the walk and had some lunch at the food court. When I came in from outside, I took this shot. Shortly thereafter, a security guard approached some of our photowalk members and informed them that there could be no photography inside the building. There was even a vague threat to one of our photographers that they might confiscate his camera. It was later learned that it was ok to shoot with point and shoot cameras, but not ‘professional’ cameras. What a load of crap. Anyway I have this one shot which I think came out all right. The picture has a slightly greenish cast to it because the glass is tinted green. I debated about fixing the white balance, but I kind of like the color cast.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Runner
by James Howe on Jul.18, 2009, under Michigan
(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/250 sec @ f/8.0)
Today was the day for the 2009 edition of Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk. I participated in the Detroit photowalk led by Terry White. This shot was taken right at the start of the walk. Our walk started at the fountain on the riverfront side of the Renaissance Center (also known as the world headquarters for General Motors). I was actually lining up to take a shot of the fountain with the RenCen in the background when this kid decided he wanted to run through the fountain. Fine by me, I think it made for an interesting shot.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Discarded #2
by James Howe on Jul.17, 2009, under Michigan
(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 50mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/40 sec @ f/8.0)
This is another shot taken of the ‘bone yard’ at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. This is a picture of a part of an old boiler (I think) which sits outside of one of the museum exhibits. This area is ‘littered’ with old boiler parts, coal and other items from an old machine shop. I was visiting the village for their annual Motor Muster event. The day was quite sunny and I liked the strong shadows created by the sun shining on the old boiler parts. Processing consisted mainly of increasing the contrast to make sure I captured the feeling of the scene.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
All of my images are available for purchase. Check out my galleries at jameshowephotography.imagekind.com for additional images.