In a New York City State of Mind

In a New York City State of Mind

NYC Pershing Square Cafe

As a native New Yorker, my roots continue to draw me back especially when it comes to my photography. The vast array of photo ops is immense and when it comes to HDR (high dynamic range photography) the city is just screaming to be photographed.

My photography to do list is quite extensive but due to my current work obligations etc, it sometimes hard to get away. But trust me when I say… I do try hard to check off as many places as I can off my list.

I have a number of familiar places in my list that I have been wanting to go back to not only with my camera but with my tripod in hand. This last weekend I was able to visit a few of them. With special permission and passes for my three-legged best friend. One of them was Ellis Island, the CRRNJ Train Terminal, Liberty State Park and the NYC Grand Central Terminal Station.

I would like to thank my wonderful husband Anthony, which behind the scenes works really hard to make things happen and work out many of the logistics. It’s great to just come up with ideas and have my very own personal assistant see them through. Scheduling and coordinating events is time consuming not to mention the requirements imposed by some of these venues. Thanks Babe you are really the best!!!  I love you more. ;o-)

This past long Holiday weekend, Roman Kurywczak from Roamin’ with Roman Photo Tours and I were joined with a fantastic group of photographers and 2K images later I decided to share a few standard photos today from the NYC Grand Central Station Photo Shoot.

I made a series of bracketed exposures before sunrise of the famous Pershing Square Cafe, which is located right outside of one of the Grand Central Terminal’s Station entrance. Traffic was light at this time on Sunday morning as were the number of people. Unfortunately the Cafe had yet to open and the lights in the signs were off. So in between the shoot inside I photographed it again after sunrise and was pretty lucky to miss the traffic and the great deal of people present. But I did not like the daylight in the images. Thinking digitally as I often do I figured I would somehow try to get it the image to look as close as I had envisioned it originally in my mind. Oh… I almost forgot I photographed this image at 16mm and then decided to crop it. I used onOne Resize (formerly known as Genuine Fractals)  software to scale upsize it. Hard to tell in this 500px image, but Resize did an awesome job.

After tone-mapping the HDR exposures using Unified’s HDR Express, I did further tweaks in Photoshop. I added a slight Radial blur to the sides and masked out the Cafe portion of it. I then applied one of the Sepia filters in Topaz Black and White Effects. At this point the image was starting to take on the look I was after but not entirely, so I decided to apply the Topaz Adjust 4 Dusk effect and faded it once back in Photoshop.

NYC Grand Central Station Terminal

One of the corridors at the NYC Grand Central Station Terminal showcasing the beautiful chandeliers the Terminal houses

Main Concourse at the NYC Grand Central Station Terminal

Main Concourse at the NYC Grand Central Station Terminal

Oyster Bar Restaurant at the NYC Grand Central Terminal Station

Oyster Bar Restaurant at the NYC Grand Central Terminal Station

Light Beams at the NYC Grand Central Station Terminal in black and white

Light Beams at the NYC Grand Central Station Terminal in black and white

The above image is not even close to the dramatic one’s photographed back in 1934 before all the skyscraper buildings were built. Back then the light rays flooded the terminal in a very striking way. Just do a Google search for Grand Central Terminal 1934 images and you will see what I mean.

I like to approach my post processing in my images on an image per image basis.  Either what I remember seeing thru my viewfinder, an emotion I felt at the time or when it poops up in my monitor and evokes a certain style for the image. I did process some in my own creative way of viewing and photographing them that I plan to share soon from My New York City State of Mind weekend.

As a last note if you have yet to enter the HDR free contest that I am running with Romin’ with Roman… what are you waiting for? We are eager to see more great images entered into the contest. So join in on the fun and the chance to win one of 3 prices. See complete info by visiting this link: HDR Contest

Roman is out of town this week with speaking engagements in Long Island and as soon as he is back home will be updating the submitted images to date.

To view additional photographs, or to purchase prints please visit my Fine Art Prints Gallery or for image licensing please visit my Stock Image Licensing Galleries

Image © 2014 Susan Candelario / SDC Photography, All Rights Reserved.  The images on this site are protected by U.S. and International copyright laws, and is not to be downloaded or reproduced in any way without written permission.  If you would like to use this image for any purpose, please contact me with any questions you may have.

Thank You.

Categories

FAA 107 Certified
adobe-certified-expert-ace-training-arctech-academy-adobe-certified-expert-png-353_132

Purchase Prints

monitor calibration

Follow Us

Purchase Prints