Guggenheim Museum – New York City
by James Howe on Sep.03, 2012, under New York
(Nikon D800, 28-300mm at 70mm, Exposure 1/2000th sec @ f/5.6, ISO 200)
I’ve been viewing an online photography course called Photoshop for Photographers, taught by Ben Willmore and presented on creativeLIVE.com. I’ve been using Photoshop for years and have viewed many tutorials and read various books and articles on how to use Photoshop. Still, watching this course gave me some deeper understanding of how to make the most of Photoshop along with learning some new techniques that I hadn’t tried before. One of the course topics that I found really helpfull dealt with retouching images, especially how to best make use of the Clone Stamp, Spot Healing Brush and the Healing Brush. I decided to look for some images in my catalog that I could practice on and I came across this image of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that I had taken a few months ago.
I really like the look of the Guggenheim, one of the last buildings designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. However, exterior shots are somewhat difficult because there is always so much activity in front of the museum. The sidewalk in front is full of art vendors, food vendors, etc. I wanted to get a shot that was more abstract, and having people and other objects in the shot just didn’t work. If you look at the as-shot image below, you will see that I managed to avoid most of the street level noise, but I still had to deal with a big van, some signage and other items. I thought this might make a good image to try practice my healing/cloning skills.
Since I knew that I wanted to create a black and white image, the first thing I did was take the image in to Silver Efex Pro 2 to see create an initial black and white image. I was going for a high contrast image and I knew that parts of the image were going to be made dark, especially around the edge, so I wanted to see what areas really needed to be cloned out. After looking at this image, I could see that some areas didn’t really need to be cloned, they would just be made black in the final image, but other areas would still be visible. It was these areas that I focused on when I edited the image.
I used primarily a combination of the Clone Stamp tool and the Spot Healing Brush. I used the Clone Stamp tool to isolate areas to be cleaned, and then used the Spot Healing Brush to do a content aware fill of the area. Most of the time this resulted in a good result. Sometimes it took a little more work. One of the toughest areas to deal with was a sign on a post in front of the museum. The brush did a nice job of filling the area, but the area on either side of the pole was transitioning from bright to dark. The brush took out the pole and tried to ‘heal’ the area to blend in, but it created a visible line where it tried to blend the two areas together. I tried a variety of things to get rid of it, and finally I just used a noise layer and blended it in to help mask the problem area. The rest of the image was reasonably easy to work with and I think the results came out fine.
Questions and feedback are always welcome, please leave them below!
Copyright ©2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
View from the High Line
by James Howe on Jun.18, 2012, under Travel
(Nikon D800, 16-35mm at 20mm, Exposure 1/1000th sec @ f/8, ISO 400)
The High Line is a linear park in New York City. It was created from an old elevated train line which was used to service the warehouse and meatpacking areas of Manhattan. A couple of years ago a major effort was undertaken to convert the blighted rail line into something nicer. The result is a long, narrow stretch of parkway which gives the visitor a great view of the lower West Side of Manhattan. More details can be found on the park’s web site: www.thehighline.org. My favorite part of the High Line was being able to walk amongst some great old buildings with great character. I also enjoyed the slightly elevated view of the city which is available from the park. If you get a chance to go to New York, I definitely recommend a visit.
When I processed the image, I wanted to make sure the final image captured the age and detail of the buildings. I did some initial work in Lightroom and then took the image into Photoshop. There, I used the Free Transform tool to do some perspective correction. Someday I’ll have to learn how to use the new ‘Adaptive Wide Angle’ filter, but I still haven’t gotten the hang of it. I used a couple of filters from Color Efex Pro 4 and then tried a black and white conversion in Silver Efex Pro 2. Back in Photoshop, I reduced the opacity of the black and white layer to 55% and changed the blend mode to luminosity. This gave a slight color shift to the image and also created a bit of the vignette. Back in Lightroom, I added a bit more vignette with the Post Crop Vignette tool.
Questions and feedback are always welcome, please leave them below!
Copyright ©2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
‘The Cube’ – 5th Avenue Apple Store
by James Howe on Jun.01, 2012, under Architecture
(Nikon D800, 16-35mm at 24mm, Exposure 1/15th sec @ f/5.6, ISO 400)
The image above shows the Apple Store located on 5th Avenue in New York City. The store is somewhat iconic in that the actual store is underground and only this glass cube projects above the surface to entice shoppers to enter. I was in the area just after sunset and decided to get my own shot of this piece of architecture. When I was reviewing this shot later, it didn’t really thrill me, just sort of looked like a snapshot and so I passed it by. However, as I often do, I made another pass over some of my images and decided the image was worth experimenting with.
One of the things I’ve discovered using Lightroom 4 is the ability of the clarity slider to impart a tonemapped look to certain images without adding halos. It can certain be overdone, but for certain subjects I think it creates a really interesting look. I made some basic adjustments in Lightroom to control highlights/shadows but then I cranked the clarity to see what it would do. I really liked the effect it had on the stone and glass so I felt this was worth additional work. One thing the clarity slider did was to add some extra shadows around the gentlemen seen in the left edge of the frame. I didn’t like that look so I created a virtual copy of the image which didn’t add the clarity. I merged the two images in Photoshop and brought in the part of the image with the men which let me avoid the extra shadow/halo effect created by clarity. From there I took the image in to Color Efex Pro 4 and did some additional work, again focusing on getting more details. I used the Detail Extractor file in addition to a couple other filters to enhance the image further. Back in Photoshop I did some perspective correction to straighten the vertical lines. Back in Lightroom I finished up with a couple more steps. First, I use the Luminance noise reduction slider on 100 to give the image a somewhat plastic look. I finished things up by adding a bit of a vignette to focus more attention on the cube.
Please feel free to leave any comments or questions below.
Copyright © 2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Guggenheim Museum – NYC
by James Howe on May.09, 2012, under Architectural Details
(Nikon D800, 28-300mm at 28mm, Exposure 1/250th sec @ f/11, ISO 200)
On a recent trip to New York City I had the opportunity to spend a little time outside the Guggenheim Museum. It was late in the day and I didn’t have the time to actually go inside so I decided to get some exterior shots. I’ve always been fond of the design of this museum and I wanted to capture some of its details. For me the two things that stand out about this museum is the unique inverted ziggurat he used as the main display area, and the typography used on the exterior lettering. The plain white concrete shapes with the simple black lettering really appeal to me. I was trying to capture something a bit more abstract than just a regular architectural shot so I played with different angles. I liked the angle on this shot, but the image was rather flat coming out of the camera. I used a few different tools in Lightroom 4 to help bring out the texture of the surface and to increase the contrast. Probably the change that had the most effect was bumping the clarity up to 100 while reducing the highlights and blacks. I debated about just making a black and white image, but I wasn’t sure what to do with the bit of blue sky. I didn’t want it dark, and I didn’t want it light so in the end I decided just to keep the bit of blue.
Please feel free to leave any comments or questions you may have about this image below.
Copyright ©2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Chrysler Building – Another View
by James Howe on Apr.30, 2012, under Architectural Details
(Nikon D800, 28-300mm at 300mm, Exposure 1/2000th @ f/8.0, ISO 320)
I personally cannot get enough of the Chrysler Building in New York City. I’ve always loved this building and thought that it was far more attractive than the Empire State Building. I’m currently reading a book called “Height – A Race to the Sky and the Making of a City” by Neal Bascomb and it details the history of the building of the Chrysler Building along with 40 Wall Street and the Empire State Building. At the time there was enormous pressure to build the tallest building in the world and its fascinating to read about what went in to making this buildings. I’ve learned several things about the Chrysler Building, one of the more interesting tidbits is that Walter Chrysler funding the building personally, it wasn’t funded by Chrysler Corporation. Clearly the man had plenty of money. I think the things that I love about the Chrysler Building are all the wonderful Art Deco details. The metal work of the Eagles and the replicas of the 1929 Chrysler radiator caps are quite unique and I really like how they architect created the metal crown on top. It’s just a fabulous building.
One of the problems with shooting tall buildings from the street is that certain elements are almost always in shadow. In this case when I was shooting up, the underside of the eagles were in shadow, and the building and sky were quite bright. The raw image managed to capture everything, there were no blown highlights or shadows, but the raw image was just a bit too bright and flat. In Lightroom 4, when I toned down the brightness of the sky and building, the shadows under the eagles blocked up and made it difficult to see the detail. I decided to create a virtual copy of the image and process it for the shadows and then blended the two layers in Photoshop. Once in Photoshop, I also made use of one of my ‘recipes’ to add some additional detail and style to the image. I used a combination of Detail Extractor, Reflector Efex and Levels and Curves to add detail and a bit of color to the image. In the Reflector Efex filter, I used the ‘Soft Gold’ option which is own reason the building is more gold than the silver color you normally associate with the building. In retrospect I probably should have tried the ‘Silver’ option, but I think the gold did a nice job on the sky and creates a unique look to the building itself. I finished things off by cropping out some of the sky, however, because I didn’t think the image needed that much sky.
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, and other images I’ve posted there.
Copyright ©2012 James W Howe – All rights reserved