City Body

This image was taken in the Depot Town area of Ypsilanti, Michigan. I was visiting the area to attend the annual Orphan Car Show held nearby. As I was walking to the show, I saw this sign. I really liked the vintage character of it. This part of town has some really nice old buildings and many of them have been rehabilitated.

I took this shot with my 70-300mm lens on my Olympus E-3. The 70-300 gives the equivalent focal length of 140-600. This particular shot was taken at 70mm (140mm).

Processing was fairly minimal. The original image, seen here to the left, was fairly flat, but was the light I shot it in was fairly flat as well. This side of the building was in shadow at the time I took. Processing consisted of initial work in Camera Raw, where I adjusted the white balance just a little bit and added some additional black.

After Camera Raw, I brought the image into Photoshop where I added a curves layer to increase the contrast. I followed that up by using an blank layer in Overlay mode where I did some burning to darken the edges. This also had the effect of bringing out a hint of red at the bottom of the image. The red came from a neon sign just out of the image frame. I finished up with some sharpening and the final result is what you see above.

I did experiment with a black & white version, but I found that I really preferred the color version. I think it's the combination of the red with the blue in the window along with the aging look of the paint on the building that makes it all work.

Comments, as always, are welcome.

If you like this image, and wish to purchase it, please visit my Color gallery at Allencreek Images. and feel free to check out my other galleries as well.