Helmsley Building Clock
by James Howe on Feb.05, 2013, under New York
(Nikon D800, 28-300 at 300mm, Exposure 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 500)
This is a shot of the clock which sits above the Park Avenue entrance to the Grand Central Terminal area. The clock belongs to the old New York Central Building, now called the Helmsley Building. The building was built in 1929 as the New York Central Building and was designed by the same architects as Grand Central Terminal. The building has a unique feature, in that traffic enters and exits the Park Avenue Viaduct through the building itself.
Processing of the image was fairly simple. The image is almost monochrome to begin with. I created the final image by blending a sepia toned layer with the original color layer, using about 75% of the sepia layer. I wanted to have just a hint of color, especially in the hands of the clock.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below.
All images available for sale or license. Please visit my Imagekind Galleries, Fine Art America Galleries or contact me for more information.
Copyright ©2012-2013 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Tree of Life
by James Howe on Feb.04, 2013, under Chicago
(Nikon D800, 28-300mm at 170mm, exposure 1/1600 @ f/5.6, ISO 250)
My wife and I had an opportunity to visit the Chicago area recently. We were in town for a tour sponsored by the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust” called ‘Wright in Racine’. The trip took us to Racine, Wisconsin where we were able to tour Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Wingspread”, the home for Herbert Johnson of S.C. Johnson Wax, as well as the Johnson Wax Administration Building. After the tour we spent some additional time in the city of Chicago. One of the great places to visit in Chicago is the Art Institute of Chicago. This museum houses a great collection of art. While we were visiting, I noticed this shot looking out of the museum toward Millenium Park. The way the lights were hanging and the way the windows were shaped, I was reminded of the leaded glass windows that Frank Lloyd Wright had designed for the Darwin Martin House in Buffalo, New York. The windows had a pattern that Wright called ‘The Tree of Life’. With a bit of a crop, this shot from the museum reminded me of those windows. For an example of what one of the real windows looks like click here
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below.
All images available for sale or license. Please visit my Imagekind Galleries, Fine Art America Galleries or contact me for more information.
Copyright ©2013 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Grand Central Terminal
by James Howe on Feb.02, 2013, under New York
(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), exposure 3.2 secs @ f/11, ISO 200)
Today (Feb 2, 2013), is the 100th anniversary of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. In honor of this anniversary, I present this shot of the main terminal area that I took in 2008. I wanted to capture the ‘active’ feeling of the terminal area so I chose to shoot this with a long exposure. Unfortunately I did not have a tripod (or tripod permit) so I ended up shooting this with my camera resting on the railing of one of the end stairway landings. The recorded exposure was 3.6 seconds which gave the image some nice blur, what is a bit confusing to me, however, is the repetitive feet that you see in the image. I’m not sure exactly how those were captured. Certainly people were moving so I would have expected blur, but these almost look like they were captured from a stroboscopic effect which I definitely do not remember.
Processing was fairly simple. I started in Lightroom 4 and adjusted the white balance. As you can see below, the raw image is very yellow. I made a few other minor corrections in Lightroom before finishing things up in Photoshop using Silver Efex Pro 2. My main goal was to bring out the detail in the people on the main floor, especially the mysterious feet.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below.
All images available for sale or license. Please visit my Imagekind Galleries, Fine Art America Galleries or contact me for more information.
Copyright ©2008-2013 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Guggenheim Museum (NYC) Interior
by James Howe on Nov.06, 2012, under Architecture
(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm (2x crop factor) at 7mm, exposure 1/13th sec @ f/4.5, ISO 250)
This image shows the interior of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1959, the museum is unique in its use of a spiral ramp to lead patrons through the exhibited items. To view an exhibit you take an elevator to the top and walk down the ramp. It’s an interesting museum and I highly recommend a visit if you are in New York City.
I took this shot in 2009 and it’s been sitting in my Lightroom catalog in various states of editing. I think the design of the space works well with a high contrast black and white, but I was bothered by various ‘blobs’ hanging over the edge of the railings. I wanted to have the edge of the ramp be smooth without distractions of people, coats, etc. breaking up the line. I’ve tried various times to get rid of these extras but I was never able to get a smooth clone. The color/texture/angle just didn’t match up and you could always see the work. I tried again a couple of days ago using a slightly different technique and was pleased with the outcome.
The technique involved using a combination of Content Aware Fill in CS6 and the Clone Stamp Tool. I would initially select an area to replace and use the fill. Sometimes the result was perfect and I just left it, other times it created a slightly blobby line that I needed to correct. The nice thing about the Content Aware Fill is that it blended the texture and color so that it was hard to see where the edit was applied. I then used a clone layer to replace the blob section of line (basically the edge of the ramp railing) with a straight section. Sometimes I had to use a mask to limit the change to just the railing edge to avoid texture/color issues. The one challenge with using the clone stamp was dealing with the angle of the ramp. In most places, if I used a straight clone, the angle of the railing didn’t match. I had to go into the Clone Stamp settings and adjust the angle of the clone to match the angle of the ramp. This was a technique that I didn’t used to know how to do and it made a huge difference.
The shot below is the ‘as shot’ image. If you look at the ramp you will see various places where people or things are hanging over the edge. If you look at the finished image, the items are gone. Makes for a much better image in my opinion.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below.
All images available for sale or license. Please visit my Imagekind Galleries or contact me for more information.
Copyright ©2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital – Ann Arbor
by James Howe on Oct.11, 2012, under Ann Arbor
(Nikon D700, 16-35mm @ 16mm, Exposure 1/640th sec @ f/11, ISO 200)
The image above shows the new C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital on the medical campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I was in the area to visit the “Grand Reopening” of my old dorm so I was prepared to take some architectural shots with my wide angle lens. As I walked by the hospital I looked up and thought this would make for an interesting shot. I lucked out with the clouds. I’ve shot this building several times but it always seems I want to shoot it when the sky is clear. A clear sky can be dramatic, especially when converted to black and white, but sometimes it’s nice to have some texture in the sky.
Originally I processed the image for color. In Lightroom I adjusted the contrast, increased the clarity and made the image a bit more dramatic than the out of camera shot seen below. Of course I had to try a black and white conversion. I used Silver Efex Pro 2 to do the job. I started with the default preset and made a few adjustments to the contrast. I then played with the sensitivity sliders to get the tonality that I wanted.
If you have any comments or feedback, please leave them below. If you happen to be on 500px.com, feel free to stop by there as well to vote on this image, as well as any other images I’ve posted there.
Thanks!
Copyright ©2012 James W Howe – All rights reserved