Stratosphere Lounge – Chicago, Illinois
by James Howe on Nov.14, 2013, under Architecture
The top floor of the Jeweler’s Building was, at one point, a location known as the ‘Stratosphere Lounge’. This location has a commanding view of the city of Chicago and during prohibition was rumored to be a speakeasy run by Al Capone. The shape of the building made it easy to station observers who could keep an eye out for cops. Turning to today, the top floor is used by the architecture firm JAHN for special events. One of the changes made to the space was to raise the floor. The ceiling is quite tall and with the original floor height, the windows were quite high and harder to look out of. With the new floor height, there is still plenty of headroom and it makes looking out the windows a much more enjoyable experience. This location was part of Open House Chicago 2013.
For processing I wanted to keep things simple. The space is quite monochrome by itself so converting to black & white seemed like a natural thing to do. I wanted to emphasize the space and the patterns and getting rid of color helps to get rid of distractions. I did keep color in one place, however, and that was on the JAHN name itself. I thought the bit of red added a nice touch contrast to the black and white space. Other changes were done basically to improve the brightness and contrast of the image.
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Copyright © 2013 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Jeweler’s Building – Chicago, Illinois
by James Howe on Nov.10, 2013, under Architecture
(Nikon D800, 28-300mm at 250mm, Exposure 1/320 seconds @ f/9.0, ISO 200)
Chicago has more than its fair share of interesting architecture. This particular building, currently known as 35 Wacker, was originally built as the “Jeweler’s Building”, since it was home to many businesses in the jewelry trade. In fact, for the first 14 years of the building’s existence, there was a car elevator in the center of the building which would allow deliveries of precious cargo to be driven into the building and taken directly to one of the first 23 floors to ensure security. The top of the building has an interesting history as well. At one time this portion of the building contained the ‘Stratosphere Lounge’ and during prohibition was rumored to have been a speakeasy run by Al Capone. This space is now owned by the architectural firm JAHN who have their offices on a lower floor. This firm’s lineage dates back to the original architecture firm of D.H Burnham & Co., which has had offices in this building since it’s construction in 1926.
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The picture itself was taken during the recent Open House Chicago event sponsored by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The shot was taken from the roof of the MDA City Apartments building, which has wonderful views of the city. When I was working on this image I was disappointed that I zoomed in just a bit too much on the building and didn’t leave any space along the left edge of the photograph. I really felt that there needed to be some breathing room along that side. I created an initial version in black and white that I really liked, but I didn’t like the way the building touched the edge of the frame. Fortunately I had taken a couple other shots from the same location at the same focal length. Even though they were shot with a different twist of the camera, I was hopeful that I could align the two images and extract just a bit of information from one to create my finished image. The images you see below are the ‘as shot’ images used to create the finished photograph. I used photoshop to auto-align the images and then I masked out all but the left edge.
One of the things I like best about this image is the clarity of the terra-cotta details. If you look closely, you can see the initials of one of the designers, Frederick Dinkelberg inscribed in some of the terra-cotta ornamentation. Another interesting bit of detail is the view into the Stratosphere Lounge. The lounge was open during the Open House Chicago event and if you look in the window you can see some people taking pictures out of the window.
All images available for sale or license. Please visit my Imagekind Galleries, Fine Art America Galleries or contact me for more information.
Copyright © 2013 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
CBOT Vault Door
by James Howe on Oct.25, 2013, under Mechanical
(Nikon D800, 28-300mm at 35mm, Exposure 1/10 seconds @ f/5.6, ISO 2500)
This past weekend the Chicago Board of Trade opened it’s bank vault to the public. The bank vault was one of many places in Chicago that were open to view as part of the 2013 Open House Chicago event, sponsored by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. Not surprisingly, the vault was a popular destination for photographers and non-photographers alike. What attracted my eye the most was the enormous vault door with its intricate locking mechanism. I also found the use of the contrasting metals to be quite attractive. I don’t know if there is an engineering reason for the selection of metals, or whether it was just an example of great combination of functional and aesthetic design, but the end result was wonderful.
When processing the image I first used Lightroom to make some visual adjustments. The most visible change was probably the heavy use of clarity. I wanted to have an ‘enhanced’ look to the shot, something that brought out all the details that I could muster. I then used Perfect Effects to do some more work with the contrast. I also decided to try a conversion to black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2. Since my focus in this image was on the intricate design, I thought that black and white might work. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to keep the nice contrast between the brass parts and the steel parts of the door, everything sort of muddled together. Besides, the color elements were as much a feature of the design as the gears themselves so doing this shot in black and white just wasn’t going to work. In the end I created a black and white conversion and the reduced the opacity to let much of the color come through. I think this creates an interesting look.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below.
All images available for sale or license. Please visit my Imagekind Galleries, Fine Art America Galleries or contact me for more information.
Copyright © 2013 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Concert at Millenium Park – Chicago, Illinois
by James Howe on Aug.05, 2013, under Chicago
(Nikon D800, 16-35mm at 16mm, Exposure 30 seconds @ f/13, ISO 125)
I really enjoy visiting Millenium Park in Chicago, Illinois. It’s got a great location and there is always something interesting to see. One of the centerpieces of the park is the Jay Pritzer Pavilion. The Pavilion consists of the stage, some fixed seating and a large grassy park. Over the park is a lattice of metal which serves both as a design element as well a providing a structure to support speakers. The sound is engineered so that no matter where you sit in the pavilion, you hear great sound. On a recent visit to Chicago, my wife and I took some time to attend a free concert by the Grant Park Symphony. I shot this from the back of the pavilion to try and bring in some of the architecture of the city. The Chicago Blackhawks had recently won the Stanley Cup and this fact was celebrated by the word ‘Hawks’ appearing in the office lights of the Prudential building.
The image was a long exposure and I tried not to burn out some of the brighter elements. If you look at the raw image below, you will see that the stage is too bright. I was able to adjust things in Lightroom, however, to give the image a more balanced look. I also used the gradient filter to bring up the exposure on the bottom of the image to help bring the crowd into the image. Finally I did some minor perspective correction using the built in lens correction feature of Lightroom. If you click the top image to bring up the lightbox viewer and then click the next button in the lower left, you can see the effect of the changes I made to the image.
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All images available for sale or license. Please visit my Imagekind Galleries, Fine Art America Galleries or contact me for more information.
Copyright © 2013 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
1936 Terraplane Express Cab Truck
by James Howe on Jul.26, 2013, under Automobiles
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 28mm, Exposure 1/500th second @ f9.0, ISO 250)
I’m not typically a ‘truck’ shooter, they generally don’t do anything for me, although I am starting to appreciate some of the design work of earlier trucks. When I visited the Concours d’Elegance at St. John last year I was struck by this particular truck. It is a 1936 Terraplane Express Cab Truck manufactured by the Hudson Motor Car Company. The Terraplane name replaced the earlier ‘Essex’ nameplate as the lower priced companion car to the Hudson. This particular truck was used on a dairy farm to haul milk cans and then used at an upstate New York garage. It was found in the basement of a house where it had been stored and underwent a 3 year restoration.
As is my usual approach to these images, my goal is to separate the car (or in this case the truck) from the noisy background you find at car shows. Once again, the Buz Sim preset of Topaz Simplify did a nice job with abstracting the background elements and I just had to carefully mask out the area over the truck.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below.
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All images available for sale or license. Please visit my Imagekind Galleries, Fine Art America Galleries or contact me for more information.
Copyright ©2013 James W. Howe – All rights reserved