HOW MUCH POST PROCESSING?

Buildings right to left: partly only Marina City (architect: Bertrand Goldberg), IBM Building (architect: Mies Van der Rohe), Trump International Hotel & Tower

Tonight I gave a little presentation at the meeting of the Dubuque Camera Club about how I process most of my wildlife photos. Beside necessary adjustments, like noise reduction, RAW sharpening, spot removal, or maybe sometimes some cropping, only small tweaks are applied to get the best out of the RAW file. I don’t change much at all on the wildlife. If the picture is not sharp or totally wrong exposed, the photo lands in the trash can or will never be published if I want to keep it for documentary reasons in the picture library.

A lot more efforts can go into a photo like this shot from last week in downtown Chicago. The photo was made through the glass of the hotel window (we were only on the 9th floor but you can’t open these windows) and it took some efforts to overcome all the challenges. From the distortion of the glass and the dust on the window, to the perspective that you can’t really change much while shooting from a hotel room, I may use all the great tools of Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Camera RAW to end up with a usable image.

”Transform” was used to correct perspective problems created by the lens, ”Dehaze” for eliminating the effect of a not so clean window, and other adjustments to enhance contrast or color contrast. The limits are only set by your own vision for the final image.

LESS IS MORE…

I can’t deny that I love architecture that is comprised by the use of glass and steel. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a German-American architect and pioneer of modern architecture has created several iconic buildings in Chicago after his emigration from the Nazi regime in Germany to the United States. I do not know who designed this modern apartment complex in downtown Chicago, but the design was maybe influenced by Mies van der Rohe’s architectural mission and principles. I loved what I saw when I had the building in the viewfinder of my camera and in particular the reflections of the clouds on the glass surfaces and the contrasty appearance overall. I admit, it was a ”shot from the hip” while walking from the hotel to a favorite dinner restaurant yesterday evening. There was a lot of blue in the frame, from the sky and bounced back from the glass surfaces. Mies van der Rohe is often associated with the fondness of the aphorism "less is more” (source: Wikipedia), and that’s what I remembered when I decided to render the image in B&W. It just reflects my own vision of modern architecture photography.

I know, some friends and followers of my blog asked, what’s going on, where are your latest photos about nature at spring time? Well, the duties of my regular job keep me very busy at the moment and a home improvement project took the rest of the time during the last couple weeks. Some new things will come soon, so please stay tuned…

OLD ARCHITECTURE

Alley in Meissen, Free State of Saxony, Germany

Ever since I live in North America my appreciation of interesting medieval architecture has grown. I grew up downtown in the German city of Bautzen, which is over 1000 years old. Being surrounded by old castles, towers, buildings, and structures, built 500-600 years ago, makes you not think much about it all the time.

During our recent visit in Germany we spent time in my home town Bautzen, in Dresden, Berlin, and also made a day trip to Meissen. This old city is even older than Bautzen and is the home of the famous Meissen porcelain. Here is a link for people that like to dig deeper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meissen 

Old towns like Bautzen or Meissen, built around castles on the rocks above the river banks, don’t have many straight lines. The play of light and shadows can be very complex and a rainy day with less contrast seemed to be a good time to capture the character of the narrow cobbled streets. I like how the reflection of the sky on the cobblestones leads the eye into the picture, the only one I was able to make without people in the frame. This city attracts a lot of tourists…

Sure, I could post “candy-colored” photos of the Albrechts castle, the Meissen cathedral, or many other places, as you may find them in the latest travel brochures, but working in black and white is the way I like in order to hide the modern touch of life better and tell the story of this old architecture. I have a few more, so please stay tuned if this is your cup of tea…