(Nikon D700, 200mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/2000 sec @ f/2.8)

We had another nice late fall day here in Michigan, so I spent some of it wandering around Ann Arbor and on the campus of the University of Michigan. I was primarily using a 70-200 f2.8 lens that I had rented to play around with. The area I took this picture in is known as ‘The Diag’ since it is a large square area where several diagonal paths intersect. The shot was taken mid-afternoon, and with the recent switch to Standard time, the sun was coming in at low angle. With all the trees in the area, the sun made interested areas of light and shade. I had been primarily shooting campus architecture, but I saw these two people sitting next to the tree in the sunlight and I knew I had to take a shot. Since I was using the 70-200 f2.8 I figured this would be a great time to use the 2.8 to get the shallow DOF that I wanted.

When I first started to work on the image I created a slightly tighter crop than I had shot in the field. If you compare to the as-shot image shown below, you will notice that I cropped in from the left side and up from the bottom to let the trees to a better job of framing the subject. The image was also overly bright, but I was able to reduce the exposure to a reasonable level. I used a couple of different brushes in Lightroom to reduce the exposure on the tree trunk and on the people. From there I considered a couple different approaches to processing. First, simply leave it pretty much as shot. I liked the warm, late afternoon sunlight and the overall color of the image. I also considered a more ‘street’ look by converting the black and white. In the end I thought I would keep the color, but give the image more of a painted look. I used Topaz Simplify with the Buz Sim preset and then lowered the opacity to bring back more of the detail of the image. I really like what the Simplify filter does with leaves, grass and tree bark.

Please feel free to leave comments and constructive criticism.

Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

(Nikon D700, 24mm PC-E, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @ f/11)

For the past few days I’ve been playing with a Nikon 24mm PC-E lens. I like to shoot architecture and I thought it would be fun to try a lens which would let me do some perspective correction in camera rather than in Photoshop. I still have a lot to learn about using this lens, but I really like it (which I could afford one). This shot of the new North Quad dormitory on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor was taken with this lens. I was lazy and shot this hand held. With a 24mm lens I was able to capture most of the building without tilting the camera too much, and then I used the shift capability to reduce any keystoning. The nice thing about being able to do this optically is you keep the full resolution of the image rather than stretching/compressing pixels in Photoshop.

This image started out as a color image (seen below), but with a deep blue sky I thought it might look nice converted to black and white with the blue sky almost black. I bumped the yellows and greens to create something which almost looks infrared. I ended up cropping some of the signs from the left side but other than that the image is pretty much untouched. Seeing this shot in color make me think I need to come back here in the fall when the trees turn colors.

What do you think, do you prefer the black and white version, or the color version? Other feedback is also welcome.

Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 240mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/2000 sec @ f/5.6)

One of the things I like to do in my spare time is wander around the University of Michigan campus looking for photo opportunities. It’s particularly nice in the late spring and summer when the students are away. Recently on one of my walks I took this shot of Burton Tower. I have a thing for high contrast and raking light and I liked how the sun was shining on the tower. I really would have preferred to take this shot from a higher point, but I didn’t have access to one so I simply backed up about as far as I could and then zoomed in on the upper portion of the tower.

My plan for this image was to produce something high contrast. I figured I would probably go black & white but I always explore both possibilities. After playing around, I decided black & white worked best. I also spent some time playing with the perspective. I wanted a more straight on shot, so I used the skew and scale tools to alter the perspective a bit. Finally, I took out some visible bits in the dark areas of the image, painting over them with a dark brush. A bit of a change from the original image seen below.

Thoughts or comments?

Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure various @ f/11)

This is a shot of the State Street area in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This part of town is right on the edge of Central Campus at the University of Michigan. This image was created from an HDR image that I had created from 3 different exposures. I didn’t have my tripod handy so I took the shots hand-held. I processed the images using Photomatix Pro, but the end result wasn’t as sharp as I would have liked, most likely due to the lack of a tripod. Even though the image wasn’t sharp, I liked the overall composition and color quality.

I shot this with my Zuiko 7-14mm lens, which has a 35mm effective focal length of 14 – 28mm. I shot this at 7mm and from a point low to the ground. I captured a large expanse of brick before getting to the main street scape. I liked the look of the brick, particularly after the HDR processing, but I felt that the image was more suited to a panoramic framing, hence the long crop. Since I liked the basic look of the image, I decided to play around in Photoshop CS4 to see what creative things I might be able to do to the image. In the past I’ve used the Cutout filter to create a posterized/wood block looking image. I tried that with this image and I was pleased with the results. I’ll probably go back to this spot again, probably with a tripod, and see if I can get a better HDR image, but for the meantime, I’ll settle for this image.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

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(Olympus E-500, 40-150mm at 118mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/80 sec @ f/8.0)

I was working through my Lightroom catalog this morning, working on adding keywords to some images when I came across this picture taken of Hill Auditorium. Hill Auditorium is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan on the campus of the University of Michigan. The architect was Albert Khan. This particular image showcases some of the fine detail work which exists in this building. In particular, this shot shows a tile embedded in the brickwork on the front of the auditorium. The tile was manufactured by Pewabic Pottery in Detroit, Michigan. This image has had minimal processing done to it, some simple curves and sharpening and that’s about it.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2006, 2009 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

This image can be purchased.