Story Behind the Photo for March 2020: Perspective

Patrick Hanley

Lens 17-40 Canon EF 17-40mm 1:4 L USM 

Canon 5D MK IV

Hand held shot at 40 mm F4.5 1/100 RAW image

Seattle Public Library Main Branch, Downtown Seattle

I went the Seattle Public Library main branch to work on the January “Letters and Numbers” assignment. The building opened in 2004 and was designed by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus and has won many honors for the interesting architecture. So, in addition to the working on that assignment I was hoping to get some interesting shots of the architecture of the building. After spending a couple of hours inside taking pictures, I exited from the 5th Ave entrance because this entrance is interesting due to its architecture. The metal framework of the building extends down over the sidewalk all the way to the ground making a covered walkway. This shot was not planned but I knew that the 5th Ave entrance had potential, I wanted to use this walkway as a visually interesting back drop for a photo. 

It had just rained and they were a couple of large puddles at the entrance so decided to try and see what kind of images I would get if got the camera as close to the ground as possible to exaggerate the effect of the puddle and the reflections. I took several shots some without people but I liked this one with the couple walking towards me because it added an interesting human element. I like the fact the man is reaching out and touching the woman it seems to soften the image of all of the hard angles of steel and concrete. Even though the shot was not planned I knew when I was shooting these shots that they would be black and white images. 

I imported the original image into Lightroom as a RAW file and did some basic adjustments, exposure, contrast, sharpening, straightening and cropping. Before I convert images to black and white, I like to increase the contrast, vibrance and saturation more than I normally would use for color image. I feel that the added contrast, vibrance and saturation gives a black and white image increased impact and dynamic range. 

The image was then converted to black and white in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. I always start with one of their presets and then fine tune the image from there. For this image I used one of their new presents from the En Vogue menu titled “More Silver”. I really like this preset. For editing after the preset has been applied to the image, I work down from the top of the adjustment panel making minor adjustments as I work my down through the adjustments. My final adjustments in Silver Efex Pro for this image were to apply some grain to simulate black and white film.

I do a lot of black and white images and have become a fan of Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. One book that I read and found to be helpful that I can recommend for Silver Efex is “Dramatic Black & White Photography Using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2” by Robin Whalley. I believe that this may only be available as an e-book. I then sent the photo to Photoshop CC where I did the final edits, I added a layer for some dodging and burning and also added a slight vignette and finally resized the image.