Images and Notes » Architecture

Guggenheim Museum – NYC

James Howe — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:23:05 +0000

(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.

Chrysler Building – Another View

James Howe — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:03:14 +0000

(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.

Chrysler Building – New York City

James Howe — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:09:19 +0000

(Nikon D800, 28-300mm at 250mm, Exposure 1/1000 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 320)

One of the joys of visiting New York City is the wonderful architecture of its buildings, both old and new. One of my favorite buildings in New York is the Chrysler Building, and one of the main reasons I like it so much is all the wonderful Art Deco details used in its design. Nothing is more iconic that the metal top which adorns this building. I took this shot on the last day of a recent trip to New York. I wasn’t able to get a nice night shot, so I worked with what was available. I was using my 28-300 lens on a rented D800 and I took numerous shots of the building from various angles. What I really wanted was an extreme close-up, but by the time you get far enough away from the building to have a nice angle on the top, even 300mm doesn’t get you very close. What I ended up doing for this shot was to crop a section out of larger image to get the detail that I wanted. Fortunately I was shooting with a rented D800 which has 36 megapixels to work with. Even after a very tight crop the image is still quite large and detailed.

I tried a couple of different ideas for processing. My initial thought was to try and get a nice clean black and white but I just couldn’t come up with something I liked. As I usually do, I looked through some of the presets in Silver Efex Pro2 to see if I could find a base look that I liked. Turns out it was the last preset, the ‘Pinhole’, which I liked the best. It created a nice strong vignette which drew my eye to the triangular windows, and it created an almost smoky look to the sky. I played with the default preset settings to improve the image, the default was too bright in the center and washed out some of the detail. What I find humorous is the fact that I used a $3000 digital SLR with medium format resolution to create a final image that looks like it was taken with nothing more than a pinhole camera. Of course, a pinhole camera would never have been able to get this shot.

Love to hear your thoughts on this one.

Atlas and St. Patrick’s Cathedral – NYC

James Howe — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 18:31:01 +0000

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 200, 1/2 sec @ f/3.2)

I have a trip to New York City coming up soon and I’ve been going through some past images that I’ve taken in New York to get some ideas about what I might want to shoot on this trip. I came across this shot that I took of the Atlas statue located in Rockefeller Center, just across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I’ve worked on this image before but never really came up with something I really liked. I’ve tried various things to remove the extra buildings since I wanted the focus to be on Atlas and the cathedral across the street. I tried something new this morning. I used a couple filter in Color Efex Pro4 to bring out some detail in the shot and increase color saturation, and then I used a Film Noir preset in Silver Efex Pro 2 to convert the image to black and white. I made some additional adjustments and came up with the final image. I think it has a nice almost hand-drawn character to it. It’s not perfect, but I think it came out all right.

Always interested in hearing your thoughts. Please leave them below.

Peninsula Paper Company – Ypsilanti, Mi

James Howe — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:03:59 +0000

(Nikon D700, 16-35mm @ 30mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/125 @ f/11)

This shot shows the old generator building for the Peninsula Paper Company of Ypsilanti, Michigan. The company closed years ago and the factory was demolished to make way for some apartments. I shot this shot of the old hydroelectric generator building from the site of the old paper factory. It was late in the day and I tried to get to this location before the sun set. I used my Photographers Ephemeris application to check out the sun angle and I knew that it would be shining on the build and I thought the evening light might look good on the building. The one downside with this sun position and time of year is the reddish color of the building tends to make the building blend in with the trees. Later in the year the sun might not be in such a nice position, but the green of the trees would help separate the building from the background.

I went through several steps to create the final image. The image started out as a wide angle shot, but I decided I wanted to focus more on the building. I also shot this as a 7 shot HDR, but after I processed the brackets in Photomatix I wasn’t thrilled with the result. After some experimentation I decided to use just two of the exposures and ran them through Photomatix to blend them. I then took the image into Photoshop. The first thing I did was use Color Efex Pro 4 to bring out some additional details. I used a ‘recipe’ that I created which uses the Tonal Contrast, Detail Extractor and Reflect Efex filters. The net result created a somewhat glassy look to the calm water and more details everywhere.

I thought image at this point was too colorful. The sunlit portions of the image looked good, but the water had a funky blue tone which just didn’t look right. I thought I might experiment with a black and white conversion, so I used Silver Efex Pro 2 to create an image based on one of the ‘antique’ presets. I adjusted the preset to make the grain less obvious, removed the borders and made some other adjustments. It looked nice, but I decided I wanted to have a bit of color so I reduced the opacity to let some color flow through. The last thing I did was to apply a Topaz Simplify filter. This created a painterly look to the entire image. I blocked out the effect on the trees and building using a layer mask, and I reduced the effect on the water.

I could have stopped at this point but I still wasn’t happy with the color. The building had actually become a little greenish. I played with color balance but couldn’t get anything to look right. I decided to start over. I followed similar steps to create a second version, but I managed to come up with an image where the building looked better, but I didn’t like the look of the water as much. As a final step, I opened both images in Photoshop as layers and had Photoshop line them up. Since they were from the same image there wasn’t a problem getting things to line up. I then masked out the water in one image to let the water show through from the other. I also decided that I didn’t link the wide angle, so I created a square crop to focus more on the building itself.

Always interested in hearing your thoughts or questions. Feel free to leave them below. Thanks!

Michigan Central Station – Carriage Entrance Side

James Howe — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:51:47 +0000

(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 28mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/2000th @ f/3.5)

This image shows the Michigan Central Station in Detroit from the carriage entrance side. The shot was taken from the back side of the building, close to where the tracks came in to the building. Carriages used to drop off or pick up passengers from under the metal structure.

Processing of the image involved a bit of perspective correction, I wanted a little less lean to the building. I also adjusted the crop a bit since it seemed to me that there was too much dead space along the left side. I experimented with different black and white conversions. I had a high key one that I liked, as well as a darker sepia, but in the end I went with a relatively contrasty plain black and white. I also used Topaz Detail to bring out some of the subtle color variation in the stonework.

Thanks for looking in and please feel free to leave comments and feedback below.

Michigan Central Station

James Howe — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 01:05:01 +0000

(Nikon D700, Sigma 15mm Fisheye, ISO 200, 5 Exposures @ f5.6)

I’ve been finding it difficult to get out and shoot new material for a variety of reasons, but today was such a nice day I decided to make an effort to get out and at least shoot something. I decided to take a short drive into Detroit to check out the progress on the Michigan Central Station. The owners are finally doing something to at least stabilize the building. Mostly this involves tightening security around the station to keep people out, removing the broken windows and putting in new windows, and working on the roof. Progress is slow, but they have definitely made some progress at least regarding the windows on the lower level. They haven’t actually replaced any that I could see, but they have removed the broken glass.

The shot was taken with my 15mm Sigma Fisheye. I’m not sure I really care for the bowed effect in this shot and debated about letting Lightroom do a lens correction, but I decided to keep it as shot. I took a series of 5 shots, hand held, and combined them using Photomatix to create an initial HDR image (seen below). I then took the HDR image into Photoshop and used OnOne Software’sPhotoTools to play with the image. I didn’t have any particular look in mind when I started, I was just trying out some filters, mostly from the HDR collection, to see what effect it had on various parts of the image. If I saw something I liked, I would alter the opacity and brush it in to the places where I thought it looked good, and removed it from places that it didn’t. I then used the PhotoFrame tool to add an ‘Acid Burn’ edge to the image. I finished the image off with Topaz Simplify which I used mostly on the sky and to a lesser extent the rest of the image.

Love to hear your comments on this one.

St. Nicholas Church, Ann Arbor (a second look)

James Howe — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 11:47:00 +0000

(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 100mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @f/11)

I was going through some images this morning looking for something to post on my Google+ account for the SacredSunday theme when I came across a picture I had taken of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I had previously done a black & white conversion that I previously posted to my blog. I recently added Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4 to my toolkit and I was just curious as to what I might be able to do using that plugin. The shot you see above was the result of using the ‘Soft Landscape’ recipe which comes with the product. I thought it did a nice job with the vignette as well as the detail in the clouds and brickwork of the church. The original image (shown below) was definitely flat and relatively lifeless and I was happy with how the final shot came out. I’d certainly be happy to hear what others think.

Feel free to leave your comments and questions below.

Chelsea Clocktower and Glazier Stove Welfare Building

James Howe — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:08:14 +0000

(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 28mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/125 @ f/16)

This is a shot taken recently in Chelsea, Michigan home to Chelsea Milling, makers of Jiffy Mix and also the home town of Jeff Daniels, whose family owns Chelsea Lumber Company. The main subject in this shot is the Clocktower, which was built by the Glazier Stove Company which once operated the worlds largest oil stove factory on the site. The Clocktower building was once the tallest structure in Washtenaw County. The tower served the dual purpose of holding a 20,000 gallon (76,000 liter) water tank for fires and for keeping time. While the Clocktower no longer serves as a water tower, but the old water tank is still encased within the tower just below the clock faces. The building just to the right of the clocktower is the Welfare Building built by the Glazier Stove Company. The building was built for the welfare of the employees of the Glazier Stove Company. According to a report in the Chelsea Standard on November 2, 1905: “This building will be given over entirely to the employes (sic) of the factory. It will contain reading rooms, supplied with the best current literature, swimming pool, shower baths, separate lockers for the men’s clothes and there will also be a fine, thoroughly equipped gymnasium in charge of a competent instructor.” Additional information about this site can be found here

I’ve taken shots of this part of Chelsea before but I really liked what the clouds were doing that day so I decided to get another shot. Out of camera, the image seemed a bit soft, so I used Topaz Detail to bring out more details. I pumped up the ‘large’ details just to the point where halos started to appear and then I backed it off. I then took the image in to Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4 and played around with some of the options in that application. I ended up using one of their ‘recipies’ called Soft Landscape which did a nice job adding a bit of vignette and making some other subtle changes. I finished things off by sharpening.

As always, I welcome your comments and questions.

Guggenheim Museum – New York City

James Howe — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:00:21 +0000

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, Exposure 1/200 sec @ f/4.5)

This is a shot of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that I took a couple of years ago. It’s actually a panorama created from three shots (the original pano is shown below). I’ve actually been working on variations of this image since I took it. I’ve played around with a variety of ideas. I recently purchased theTopaz Labs Detail plugin and I experimented with it on this image. I boosted the detail of most of the image and then masked out the building. It gave the colored elements of the shot an interesting look, especially the taxi. However, at a smaller size the image looked to ‘crunchy’. So I then applyed Topaz Simplify and again masked out the building to create the final image. I still like the funky look of the yellow cab and I’ve always liked the way Simplify works on people as a way of de-emphasizing them.

As always, would love to hear your thoughts or questions.