State Capital – Albany, New York

I have lived here in New York State all of my life (55 years) and until last week I have never been inside New York’s Capital building located here in Albany. I spent a few hours shoot images of the assembly chambers and the main staircase, commonly referred to as the “Million Dollar Staircase”. Below are a few of the images for my first visit to the New York State Capital Building.

Eastern States Penn Barber Chair Rework

If you search the Internet for Eastern States Penitentiary (ESP) images you find hundreds of images of the ESP’s barbers chair. I made to trips down to ESP to shoot photographs there back in 2010, here is the two chairs you will find at ESP. The red chair is in the area that you go during normal visitor pass and the other chair is in a remote area only available to groups paying for special access for photo sessions.

These photos I when back and did a complete High Dynamic Range (HDR) rework. The first image I did the HDR work using NIK Software’s HDR Efex Pro. Then using NIK Software Color Efex Pro 3 I applied Tonal Contrast, Glamour Glow and Darken Lighten Center filters. The second photo was the same process but after I applied the three Color Efex Pro 3 filters I then processed image thru NIK Software Silver Efex Pro 2 to produce a B&W image.

Schenectady Photographic Society Color Print of the Year

This image from the Eastern States Penitentiary (ESP) took top honors at Schenectady Photographic Society (SPS) as Color print of the year 2010-2011. It is a wonderful feeling as you set there and they are going thru all the entered prints and yours is still in the running, when they get that moment when they announce “and the Print of the Year” and it is your print. I always shoot photos that I want to hang on my walls and when they win a competition or someone wants to purchase one, it is the frosting on the cake.

This image is from Eastern States Penitentiary of the cell, which severed as the barbershop for the inmates. This image has been shot be every photographer that has visited the penitentiary, do an image search of ESP and see for your self there will be hundreds of the this cell.

This image is High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos made up of nine bracketed images take one stop apart. The nine images are merged together and tone mapped using Photomatix software by HDR Soft. The tone-mapped image is then imported back into Adobe Lightroom where I did a curve adjustment to bring the contrast back. From Lightroom the image is exported out to Photoshop where I use filters from NIK software to put the final touches onto the image. The first NIK filter I apply to the image is Tonal Contrast to bring out the textures, then follow this filter with NIK Glamour Glow, which brings out the color and apply a soft glow to the image. And the final touch to the image is with NIK Darken/Lighten Center to darken up the outer area of the image to give the appearance of the barber’s chair being illuminated from the ceiling window light in the ceiling of the cell.

The final result is a HDR photograph that does not scream HDR; to me this is the problem of many photographers today doing HDR they take it to far and the image screams HDR. Digital photography today is amazing but as a photographer you have to know when to stop when Appling the Photoshop tools and filters.

October 2010 Gallery

I took seven photographers from Schenectady Photographic Society down to Eastern States Penitentiary (ESP) and we had access to cell block 11 and 14, which is normally off limits to the general public. I have just uploaded a gallery of images taken during the trip back to ESP. All the high dynamic range images where processed with Nik HDR Efex Pro software.

http://rjnphoto.com/Gallery/2010images/ESP-Oct2010/

Eastern State Penitentiary Visit

July 5th I drove down to Philadelphia PA to visit the Eastern State Penitentiary, one of America's most historic prison taking up a full city block in the Fairmount area of Philadelphia. This is now setup as a museum and for photographers they will allow you to bring and use your tripod for a nominal fee. Six out of the thirteen cell blocks are open to the public and the majority of them are still in a decaying state making this location for high dynamic range (HDR) photography. I have uploaded a image gallery of photos I did while there, you can access the gallery from link below.

http://rjnphoto.com/Gallery/2010images/EasternState/

HDR Workshop at Oakwood Cemetery Chapel

I did a HDR photography workshop hosted by the Photocenter of Troy at the Oakwood Cemetery Chapel - Crematorium in Troy NY. The Chapel was built in 1890 in memory of Gardner Earl who past away in 1887. this location was a amazing place to introduce photographers to HDR photography. I have created a image galley of photos I took from this event and the gallery can be access from link below.

http://rjnphoto.com/Gallery/2010images/OakwoodHDR/

New HDR Processing software

I have been trying out some new High Dynamic Range (HDR) software, HDR Photostudio by Unified Color. Photomatix has always ben my main software for HDR work but I am finding HDR Photostudio to be great for doing HDR landscape work producing high dynamic range landscape image that does not have the HDR pushed look and has a feature that eliminates the halos between light/dark areas common in HDR images.

These are a few images tat I took this past weekend at Montgomery Place and processed through HDR Photostudio from three bracketed exposures (-2, 0, 2)

Saint Josephs Church

I conducted a HDR photography workshop and we had access to Saint Josephs Church located in Albany, NY. This church has been vacant since 1990 and it is sad to see this mighty cathedral in it state of decay. Hopefully people realize what a wonderful structure this and pull together to save and restore this church.

The church was cold and dark with only a flood light illuminating the interior, but the HDR imaging reveals the colorful beauty of the churches interior.

I have a image gallery of photographs created during this workshop which can be accessed from link below.

http://rjnphoto.com/Gallery/2009images/StJosephs/