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Cathedral of Learning

Cathedral of Learning

For the Class With Dave group. Assignment: Black and White architecture. This is a repeat assignment from earlier. My original version of this assignment was a much more standard, though high contrast B&W night scene, so I decided to go with something more creative and different from what I normally do. This was shot in the afternoon on the University of Pittsburgh campus. In order to get more fantastic and less realistic tones, I used a combination of Channel Mixer, Curves and Levels adjustment layers with layer masks.

Channel Mixer:
Red: +40 Green: +180 Blue: -100

Levels 1:
input Black: 10 Gray: 1.00 White: 233
output Black: 0 White: 255
with a layer mask blocking out the right (bright) side of the sky.

Curves (input,output):
0,0 41,90 168,141 197,181 228,137 255,255
with a layer mask blocking out the building and the tree

Levels 2:
input: Black: 0 Gray: 1.24 White: 255
output Black: 0 White: 255

3-16-07

Day 217 of 365 days. I was looking through my previous pictures earlier and just enjoying seeing where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and I realized that I hadn’t really done a simple portrait in quite a while. I’ve just been taking shots that were somehow related to my day and talking about that.…

3-13-07

Day 214 of 365 days. I had a job interview today. Went in and was corporate Mav. Or as close to that as I get these days. I probably could have gotten SOME job a while ago, but I’ve been so unhappy with SOME job in the past that now I’m pretty much laying all…

3-12-07

Day 213 of 365 days. I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. I’m probably the hardest working unemployed man in the world. Today I accomplished several things. I talked to two recruiters and emailed with a third. I spent the rest of the day working on my paper for the conference I’m speaking at…

3-11-07

Day 212 of 365 days. One of my earliest ideas was to do a fetal position pic in this project. I just never really got around to it. Funny because it seemed like a really obvious backup picture to do. Turns out, not so much. First of all, I’m neurotic and certainly couldn’t just lay…

3-7-07

Day 208 of 365 days. I had been meaning to do this shot for a while. Ever since the lovely and talented (take that Amber :-P) Sassyshannon999 made her Inspired by the Film group. It suddenly occurs to me that Scarface is not among my 519 DVDs. Clearly that is some sort of oversight that…

3-4-07

Day 205 of 365 days. Generally I don’t really like to repeat the same basic shot two days in a row (unless I plan ahead for a good reason, like with my day 182 and day 183 shots), but the dichotomy of today just made this too perfect. Yesterday I was in a room of…

2-28-07

Day 201 of 365 days. I’ve had this idea since maybe the first or second week I started this project. I just never got around to doing it before. I think I even mentioned to TravelinJim on a pic of his that I had a cool long exposure idea. Well, since I’m going to be…

2-26-07

Day 199 of 365 days. There was actually a lot I wanted to get around to doing today. Working on some photo editting. Working on my paper for the conference. Playing some quality video games. Didn’t really get to any of that. Instead, I spent the day doing phone interviews for a couple different jobs.…

2-14-07

Day 187 of 365 days. You know even though I use a lot of darkness in my photography, I’d argue that my work usually isn’t all that "dark." So today is kind of a departure from the norm I guess. You can blame it on last night’s NyQuil induced coma and hallucinations. I thought of…

Martin’s Ferry Steel Plant

Martin's Ferry Steel Plant

Taken for the Class with Dave group. The assignment was to take a picture of some sort of architecture in black and white and to share the photoshop settings for the translation with the group. This shot was immediately what sprang to mind when I read the assignment. Its a steel plant on the way to one of the cities I wrestle in. I took the shot on the way home so that it would be darker and the lights would be on. I used a fairly long exposure and a higher ISO to get a lot of exposure detail.

In photoshop I used a channel mixer adjustment layer to set it to black and white with the following settings:

Red: +20%, Green: +35%, Blue: +75%

Then I added a levels adjustment layer with these settings:

input Black: 15, input Mid: 1.0, input White: 240
output Black: 0, output White: 255

pittsburgh pedestrian

pittsburgh pedestrian

Homo Sapiens Alleghenius from the Pittsburgh region of Pennsylvania, USA. Indigenous Pittsburghers are among the most pedestrian peoples on the planet. While they certainly possess the physical capability to operate motor vehicles, many go their entire lives without ever receiving instructions to do so. While several will use communal transportation, it is not uncommon for them to travel through walking.

Homo Sapien Alleghenius is a mostly omnivorous creature, though like this specimen they prefer gathering to hunting. Both genders are capable of mating at any point throughout the year and females give live birth. The population typically dwells in structures of their own creation in either the mountains or by their environment’s numerous rivers.

For the Class with Dave group. Assignment: National Geographic style picture of somebody in their natural habitat.

1-29-07

Day 171 of 365 days. Today, I went to my pregnant friend Gina’s house to help her make a plaster cast of her torso so that she can remember what she looked like while pregnant forever and ever. I guess its something pregnant women do these days. Even though I took pictures of the process…

1-26-07

Day 168 of 365 days. Some days I just don’t feel like getting out of bed. Today was one of them. One of the nice things about this whole unemployment experience is that it gives me a break from my career. For the record I hate computers. I hate the computer industry. I hate working…