Posted on Nov.12, 2010, under Greenfield Village

Menlo Park Lab

(Nikon D700, 16mm, ISO 3200, Exposure 1/60 sec @ f/8.0)

I was looking through my Lightroom catalog for something to post to the blog when I noticed this shot. Originally I wasn’t excited about it. I liked it, but I didn’t think it was special. Still, there was something about it that I found attractive so I spent a little time with some post processing to see what I might come up with. The shot is from Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park Lab building located in Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. This was pretty much a grab shot as I walked through the building. I bumped the ISO and stuck my camera into this little room and took a couple of shots. I had my tripod, so I could have set up and taken multiple shots for an HDR, but it was getting late in the day and I was getting lazy. I think the thing that appeals to me is what the fisheye does to the lines in the image. I like the strong curve of the doorframe as well as the curved lines created by the paneled walls.

For processing, I initially used Lightroom to reduce the noise in the image. I shot this as 3200 and while the noise wasn’t awful, it was pretty easy to clean up with Lightroom. I then went into Photoshop and used Silver Efex Pro to do the conversion. I again stepped through the presets and came across one that I had created which I call Holga Panatomic X. It’s Nik’s standard Holga preset, which is somewhat dark with a strong vignette, but customized to use the ISO 32 Panatomic X film type. I also added a bit of sepia tone as well. The fisheye creates a nice circular feeling to the image and I think the extra bit of vignette just adds to it and helps bring the focus to the center of the image rather than the edges.

Menlo Park Lab - as shot

What do you think? Comments always welcome.

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

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