Chicago Photo Walk Series

This week is going to be dedicated to a trip we took to Chicago last Saturday. I had brought a full gear bag and some flash stuff for show and tell but was not going to even try to lug the back around the city all day. The 5D Mk II was out as I did not need to have the weight of the battery grip and any lens would go longer on the 40D. As far as a lens, here again I went with the less is more philosophy. It was going to be a one lens day. Options were EF 50 f/1.4 prime, EF 16-35 f/2.8L, or the EF 24-105 f/4L stabilized. Ok so it was a no brainer, hand held on the street, the stabilization was the clear choice. There were only a couple of times I would have liked the wider lens as the APS-C sensor was doing it's thing.

We had just finished a late lunch at the Cheesecake Factory at the base of the John Hancock Building and the sun was well on its trip to the western horizon. Walking south on Michigan avenue the sun hit may and I saw how it peeked around the building. I backed up, dialed in as small an aperture as I could and shot away. I took a number at different exposure levels but this was going to look good as a silhouette.

Camera specs on the original shot above were ISO 100 in Aperture Priority on a Canon 40D with an EF 24-105 f/4L IS lens. Shutter speed was 1/50th at f/22 with a focal length of 70 mm. I had a circular polarizer screwed on which pitched in a couple more stops. This is a screen capture of the RAW file and was a little flat as it is unprocessed for any useful purpose. Below is the Basic panel in Lightroom 2 showing the starting point.

Only four sliders were used in Lightroom; Recovery, Fill Light, Blacks, Clarity, and Vibrance. Obviously the Blacks slider was the heavy machinery for the silhouette. While the Blacks slider brought the sky down, the Recovery slider really separated the sky from the sunlight. Just a touch of fill light was used to bring the windows in on the left side of the building adding to the three dimension. I could not leave without a dose of Clarity and a shot of Vibrance.

That was really all I did. I might have touched the sharpens slider just a bit but not too much. If I were to send this for print I wad most definitely revisit the sharpness slider.

Hey, hope this will be the start of a really good week for you.

Take care... Doug