Otto Berkeley
Onyx
The Victoria and Albert Museum, otherwise known as the V&A, was founded in 1852, and today houses a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects, focusing on decorative arts and design across 145 galleries. It has an unrivalled collection of sculpture, ceramics, furniture, textiles, jewellery and metalwork, but the building itself is also a remarkable example of great architecture. This image was captured on its second level, overlooking the Paul and Jill Ruddock Gallery, with the top of a glass cabinet reflecting the museum's geometric roof and skylight.
My main aim with this image was to convey the elegance of the building and the airy ambience from the light streaming through its roof, as well as the rich character of a gallery devoted to large-scale works that were once part of Renaissance buildings. I liked how the walkway and gallery were faintly visible through the glass, and how there was a glimpse in the distance of the tip of the 17th-century choir screen from the Cathedral of St John at Hertogenbosch.
Seven bracketed exposures were shot while the camera was resting on the glass cabinet, with the exposures then blended in Photoshop using luminosity masks. The midtones and shadows were geared towards the brighter exposures to produce a high-key finish, and darker exposures incorporated to preserve highlight information around the skylight and its reflection. Once the exposures were blended, I used the Pen Tool to isolate portions of the walls and the choir screen in the distance, and then brightened these with the higher exposures by applying radial and reflective gradient masks.
I tried to keep the colour-grading as straightforward as possible in order to convey the modernity and simplicity of the museum's architecture, and to keep the focus on the light itself and the way that the building's design seemed to allow light to cover every corner of its space smoothly and gracefully. Using Hue/Saturation layers, I reduced the yellows, reds and greens along the walls, and pushed towards a colder finish with hints of cyan in the shadows. There are traces of warmth in the highlights, and this was achieved by using the Apply Image function to layer-mask two Colour Balance adjustments, and by using a Gradient Map, both of which helped to create a faint split-toned finish. After this, I used two low-opacity Colour Lookups with the Bleach Bypass and Futuristic Bleak presets and set to Soft Light, which gently enhanced the image's overall contrast and added definition to the shutters across the skylight.
The final adjustments I made were in Colour and Silver Efex Pro, where I added a vignette and lowered the midtones in order to emphasise the image's tonality, and where I reduced the shadow structure in order to play up the location's clean lines and smooth textures. In a building with a collection of objects representing 5,000 years of creativity, there was something riveting, abstract and very straightforward about this vantage point.
You can also connect with me on Facebook, 500px, Google+ and Instagram.
Onyx
The Victoria and Albert Museum, otherwise known as the V&A, was founded in 1852, and today houses a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects, focusing on decorative arts and design across 145 galleries. It has an unrivalled collection of sculpture, ceramics, furniture, textiles, jewellery and metalwork, but the building itself is also a remarkable example of great architecture. This image was captured on its second level, overlooking the Paul and Jill Ruddock Gallery, with the top of a glass cabinet reflecting the museum's geometric roof and skylight.
My main aim with this image was to convey the elegance of the building and the airy ambience from the light streaming through its roof, as well as the rich character of a gallery devoted to large-scale works that were once part of Renaissance buildings. I liked how the walkway and gallery were faintly visible through the glass, and how there was a glimpse in the distance of the tip of the 17th-century choir screen from the Cathedral of St John at Hertogenbosch.
Seven bracketed exposures were shot while the camera was resting on the glass cabinet, with the exposures then blended in Photoshop using luminosity masks. The midtones and shadows were geared towards the brighter exposures to produce a high-key finish, and darker exposures incorporated to preserve highlight information around the skylight and its reflection. Once the exposures were blended, I used the Pen Tool to isolate portions of the walls and the choir screen in the distance, and then brightened these with the higher exposures by applying radial and reflective gradient masks.
I tried to keep the colour-grading as straightforward as possible in order to convey the modernity and simplicity of the museum's architecture, and to keep the focus on the light itself and the way that the building's design seemed to allow light to cover every corner of its space smoothly and gracefully. Using Hue/Saturation layers, I reduced the yellows, reds and greens along the walls, and pushed towards a colder finish with hints of cyan in the shadows. There are traces of warmth in the highlights, and this was achieved by using the Apply Image function to layer-mask two Colour Balance adjustments, and by using a Gradient Map, both of which helped to create a faint split-toned finish. After this, I used two low-opacity Colour Lookups with the Bleach Bypass and Futuristic Bleak presets and set to Soft Light, which gently enhanced the image's overall contrast and added definition to the shutters across the skylight.
The final adjustments I made were in Colour and Silver Efex Pro, where I added a vignette and lowered the midtones in order to emphasise the image's tonality, and where I reduced the shadow structure in order to play up the location's clean lines and smooth textures. In a building with a collection of objects representing 5,000 years of creativity, there was something riveting, abstract and very straightforward about this vantage point.
You can also connect with me on Facebook, 500px, Google+ and Instagram.