Posted on May.16, 2011, under Ann Arbor

(Nikon D700, 16-35mm at 27mm, ISO 200, 5 bracketed exposures @f/8.0)

We had some nice weather last week and all around I saw trees flowering and leafing out. I decided to take a quick drive around the campus of the University of Michigan to see where there might be a good combination of architecture and flowering landscape. The shot above shows the Intramural Building with a nice line of flowering trees. Not sure what kind of trees they are, but they looked nice.

The building is hard to get in good light since it faces pretty much North. In winter the sun is typically behind it, and in summer trees obscure the sun until it is high in the sky which tends to leave the front of the building dark. I shot this image into the morning sun and took 5 exposures to produce and HDR image. I wasn’t paying enough attention and managed to get a large lens flare right in the main subject area of the image which I don’t particularly care for. After processing the 5 shots in Photomatix, I did some work on the color version in Photoshop, but I found the flare to be too annoying. I took the image into Silver Efex Pro 2 and came up with a nice vintage looking image which I think suits the age of the building. The sepia treatment also reduced the visibility of the flare to a point where it no longer bothers me.

Interested in hearing your feedback on this one. Feel free to leave comments and suggestions below.

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

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