The Art Institute of Chicago is a great place to visit, not only for the exhibits themselves, but for the architecture of the building itself. This is the “Woman’s Board Grand Staircase” and is located just off the main entrance to the museum. My main goal in processing was to bring out as much detail as I could in the stairs and the stone work.

This is a shot of the clock which sits above the Park Avenue entrance to the Grand Central Terminal area. The clock belongs to the old New York Central Building, now called the Helmsley Building. The final image was created by blending a sepia toned layer with a color layer in Photoshop, using about 75% of the sepia layer. I wanted to have just a hint of color, especially in the hands of the clock.

Today (Feb 2, 2013), is the 100th anniversary of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. In honor of this anniversary, I present this shot of the main terminal area that I took in 2008. I wanted to capture the ‘active’ feeling of the terminal area so I chose to shoot this with a long exposure. Unfortunately I did not have a tripod (or tripod permit) so I ended up shooting this with my camera resting on the railing of one of the end stairway landings. The recorded exposure was 3.6 seconds which gave the image some nice blur, what is a bit confusing to me, however, is the repetitive feet that you see in the image. I’m not sure exactly how those were captured. Certainly people were moving so I would have expected blur, but these almost look like they were captured from a stroboscopic effect which I definitely do not remember.

One of the most common sights to see in New York City are the ubiquitous yellow cabs, they can convert the streets of Manhattan into a river of yellow. On a recent visit to New York I had to opportunity to wander around. I had a 28-300mm lens on my camera and with the lens racked out to 300mm I snapped this shot of group of cabs in the Midtown area. I like the compression you get out of a telephoto lens as well as the shallow depth of field and I like the look of the cabs and the repetition of their roof top signage.

For those who don’t know, the High Line in New York City is a wonderful linear park created out of an abandoned rail line. The elevated tracks that used to service the various warehouses and industries in the Meatpacking and West Chelsea neighborhoods now offer a wonderful view of New York for pedestrians. If you ever get to New York, I highly recommend spending some time visiting this park. The shot above was taken during my visit to New York this past April.

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 view many tutorials and read various books and articles. 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 areas that I found interesting 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.

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.

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.

Whenever I visit New York City I like to spend some time around Rockefeller Center. I love the Art Deco styling of the buildings and the sculptures. An impressive example of this is the statue of Atlas, which stands directly across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The statue shows Atlas holding up the world and was created by sculptor Lee Lawrie with help from Rene Paul Chambellan. The statue was installed in 1937. I’ve always admired this statue for it’s strong Art Deco style. When I was in New York this time, I wanted to make sure I got a close up of the statue. In close you can really appreciate the detail work that makes the statue so stunning.

New York City is full of food vendors, in parts of the city you can’t go a block without seeing one or more. This guy was set up just outside of Rockefeller Center on 5th Avenue. I shot this from the sidewalk as I walked by. Processing was pretty simple. I made a minor rotation correction in Lightroom, did some tweaking of the highlights, contrast etc to adjust the look and add a bit of richness to the image. The biggest change was created by using extreme settings in Clarity and Luminance noise reduction.