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.

This seems to be the time of year when I take a look through pictures I’ve shot in the past but never did anything with. Some of this is due to the fact that I haven’t really had the time or the motivation to go out and shoot new material. Some of it is just the simple fact that I like to browse my catalog for images which might be interesting to work with. The raw image that I took of the Guggenheim Museum in New York was not going to be one of those images. I didn’t particularly care for the composition, I didn’t like all the people in the shot, it just didn’t thrill me. So it was somewhat of a surprise to me that I picked this image to experiment with.

I don’t get to New York as often as I would like to any more. I used to be able to count on at least a couple of trips each year for work, but not so much any more. This particular image was taken a year ago when my wife and I visited New York for our wedding anniversary. It was the first time I had visited the museum and I certainly hope to get back to see it again. It was a cloudy and somewhat rainy day when we visited which meant that the skylight above was mostly white, instead of blue. The interior was not extremely bright, so I had to bump my ISO to 1250 to get a reasonable shutter speed. Unfortunately the camera I was using at the time, an Olympus E-3, doesn’t do well at higher ISO settings. I love the camera, I just wish it did better at higher ISO.

This is a shot of Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan. The image was taken at 7 am, just as the morning rush hour was getting started. I didn’t have a tripod with me (and the transit police probably would have hassled me anyway) so I just set my camera on the staircase railing. I wanted to use a relatively slow shutter speed to capture some movement, but I didn’t want everything to be blurred. I really like the fact that there is a mix of people who are blurred, and others who aren’t. This images is a toned black & white converted from a color image, but in reality the color image doesn’t look that much different.

This shot shows Federal Hall in New York City. The site of Federal Hall, located on Wall Street, is where George Washington took the oath of office as the first President in 1789 and was also the site of the first Congress, Supreme Court and Executive Branch offices. The original building was torn down in 1812 and ultimately replaced with the current structure in 1842. The new structure served as the country’s first customs house. This picture was taken during a gray, snowy day, and my processing attempted to keep that feeling. The image was originally in color, but the color image and the final image aren’t really that much different in tonality. The other thing I did was to pump up the grain. If you look carefully, you can see streaks of snow in the image as well.

I was in New York on business recently, and early one morning I took a look out of my hotel window to check on the weather. Snow had been predicted and I wanted to see if it was snowing yet. When I looked out, I was captivated by the color and geometry of the skyscrapers, particularly the way the windows were lit. Since it was early, only a handful of lights were on and it created an interesting pattern. As I looked further, I could see the Empire State Building in the haze, a haze created by a light snowfall. I really liked the combination of the strong, modern geometric shapes in the foreground combined with the older architecture of the Empire State Building fading into the background.

This is a fairly standard shot of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. This is a shot of one of the towers that I took as I was walking from Manhattan to Brooklyn. This was the first time I had walked on the bridge and it was an interesting experience. I think the thing that struck me the most was the geometric patterns created by all the suspension wires. I tried to capture that in this shot. In processing, I converted from color to black and white and then added a sepia tone. I also added a bit of simulated film grain to give a more vintage feeling to the image.

This is a shot of Radio City Music Hall in New York City. In the background you can also see 30 Rockefeller Center. I was in town on business and walked down to Rockefeller Center to take some shots. I didn’t have a tripod so I had to do everything hand held. I remember standing across the street from Radio City to take this shot. I tried to support myself has best I could in order to get a clean shot. My Olympus E-3 has in camera stabilization and I think that helped keep the shot clear as well.