‘The Fist’
by James Howe on Mar.17, 2009, under Detroit, Michigan
(Olympus E-3, 70-300mm at 226mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/200 sec @ f/7.1.)
‘The Fist’ is a sculpture made in tribute to Joe Louis aka ‘The Brown Bomber’ and sits in the middle of a busy intersection in Detroit, Michigan. The 24 x 24 x 11.5 feet Monument to Joe Louis was commissioned by Time Inc. for the City of Detroit to honor Joe Louis. It was created by sculptor Robert Graham and installed at Jefferson Avenue at Woodward, Detroit on October 16, 1986. Over the years the artwork has been the subject of controversy.
This picture was taken during the Detroit edition of Scott Kelby’s 2008 Worldwide Photo Walk. The image was created from a color digital photograph converted to black & white. Some minor editing was done to the image to remove the cables from which the art hangs. The arm hangs underneath a metal pyramid, suspended by cables, and in the photograph, the cables were just distracting elements so I removed them. I added a slight vignette to focus the eye more on the fist itself. I finished things off by adding a platinum toning curve.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
This image can be purchased.
Layers
by James Howe on Mar.17, 2009, under Abstract, Michigan
(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 54mm (2x crop factor), ISO 200, exposure 1/4 sec @ f/3.5)
This image was taken at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. This museum has a great collection of power generators and heavy machinery (among other things). This particular shot it is a close-up of one of the power generators on display. What caught my eye was the various layers of metal and the way they were put together. I particularly like the use of the dovetails on one of the pieces.
The source image was in color, and then converted to black & white. I added a slight platinum tone which I think goes well with the metal surfaces. Other than that, there was minimal processing done to this image.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
This image can be purchased.
State Theatre Marquee
by James Howe on Mar.14, 2009, under Ann Arbor, Michigan
(Olympus E-3,70-300mm at 300mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/500 sec @ f/10)
This image is a close up shot of the State Theatre marquee in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The theatre is located in the heart of the campus area of the University of Michigan. The theater itself was designed by famed theater architect C. Howard Crane, who also designed the Fox Theater in Detroit. Built in 1942, the State Theater was the last commercial building to be completed in Ann Arbor after the start of World War II.
This image comes from a collection of signage photography that I have been working on. One day I just decided to wander around Ann Arbor with my telephoto lens trying to capture details of things that I might not normally look at so closely. While this sign is in pretty good shape, you can still see that it has some age to it. When I was working with this image, I wanted to give it a more graphic look so I tweaked the image somewhat. The color is slightly more saturated than the original image, and I used the cutout filter in Photoshop to abstract some of the features away. I didn’t want to go too far, because I still wanted to convey the age and slightly faded nature of the sign.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
This image can be purchased.
Diagonals – Revisited
by James Howe on Mar.08, 2009, under Abstract, University of Michigan
(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 54mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/320 sec @ f/7.1)
This is a shot of the new Ross School of Business building on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The building was recently opened to students. I took this shot while it was under construction.
The first time I worked with this image I converted it to black & white and cropped it square. That version of the image can be seen here. I was going through some images today to do some keywording and I noticed the original, color version and thought that a different interpretation might yield an interesting image. Recently a Flickr contact, Larry Hamilton (aka eYe_image), had posted some shots he had taken of the Ross Business School building, and his images inspired me to review some of mine.
The processing was pretty minimal. I took the image into Photoshop CS4 and used the brush tool to paint over the blue sky. I used some additional masking to make sure that I didn’t accidentally paint over the building. I then used to tool to paint over an area of the building in the bottom right corner which as in deep shadow. I wanted to make sure that the final image had a very hight contrast and I didn’t want any areas of ‘dark’, if it was ‘dark’ I wanted it to be black. I used a HSL layer and bumped the saturation just a bit, but that was it.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
This image can be purchased.
Auburn Hotel
by James Howe on Feb.19, 2009, under Architecture
(Olympus E-3, 70-300mm at 76mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/160 sec @ f/9.0)
This is a picture of the Auburn Hotel in Auburn, Indiana. I recently had a day off of work and I decided to visit the Auburn/Cord/Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. Auburn was the home to the Auburn Automobile Company which eventually was owned by the Cord Corporation. The Cord Corporation manufactured Auburn, Cord and Dusenberg automobiles.
The museum is located on the edge of town in the old Auburn plant, and to get to it I had to drive through the town of Auburn. As I was passing through town, I noticed this really cool old hotel. The first thing I noticed was the neon sign. I have a thing for old signage and this caught my eye. The next thing I noticed was the name on the building, particularly the typography. I stopped my car and took several shots. This image was originally in color, but the color image came out looking like a snapshot of an old building, so I converted the image to black & white and added some toning. I think the toned image gives the image a more historical look which I think befits the building.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
This image can be purchased.