(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.

Copyright ©2009-2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 8mm (2x crop factor), ISO 125, Exposure 1/200 sec @f/6.3)

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 started out thinking I would try some perspective correction and some black and white work just to see where things might end up. I wanted to emphasize the texture of the building and wanted to get some interesting black and white tonalities. I took the image into Silver Efex Pro2 and ran through some of the presets. I settled on one of the presets which created a dark, but toned image with some edge vignetting. I didn’t want the toning, so I removed that. I also bumped up the structure to bring out more of the concrete surface. The end result was an image which sort of looked like a charcoal drawing. The image was a little flatter than I wanted, so I used curves to brighten the whites and darken some of the dark areas. I used Topaz Simplify to blur out the people in the bottom of the image, masking out the effect from the building. I then played with a couple of crops. The first thing I tried was a square crop, highlighting the ramp portion of the building. I wanted to look at some portion of the image and zoomed in. It was at that point that I saw a different crop, one which eliminated more of the bottom and gave a more elongated feel to the shot. The end result is what you see above.

Love to hear you thoughts on this, leave them in the comments below. Thanks!

Copyright © 2009-2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 1250, Exposure 1/30 sec @ f/4.0)

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.

Processing for this image consisted mainly of some noise reduction in Lightroom and conversion to black and white. I bumped the contrast a bit in Photoshop and also brightened the image somewhat. I didn’t want to brighten the skylight area so I ended up masking the curve in that area. You can see in the raw image below that the color balance is a bit yellow. I should have shot my Whibal card to have something to compare it with.

Comments and feedback are welcome and encouraged.

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

(Olympus E-500, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 200, exposure 1/3 sec @ f/4.5)

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.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2007,2009 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

This image can be purchased.

www.jameshowephotography.com

(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 160, exposure 1/40 sec @ f/6.3)

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.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

This image can be purchased.

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 1000, exposure 1/4 sec @ f/5.6)

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.

The image has had some simple processing done to it. I used the ‘cutout’ filter in Photoshop to make the image less about reality and more about shape and color. I then used a mask to remove the cutout effect from the Empire State Building because I wanted to see all the detail that I could. The image looks like a monochrome shot with selective color, but this is what things looked like in the early morning light.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

This image can be purchased as a framed/unframed print, or as a poster.

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 27mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/60 sec @ f/7.1)

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.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

This image can be purchased.

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 200, exposure 1/5 sec @ f/3.5)

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.

The shot was taken in color and converted to black & white. The processing details can be found at my photo processing blog, Image Notebook. I really like the 1930′s feeling that I get when I look at this image. The combination of the architecture and the black & white tonality really go together well.

Comments and feedback are welcome.

This image is available for purchase.

Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved