Otto Berkeley
Far Beyond the Stars
Amid London's ever-evolving skyline and the constant refurbishment work inside interiors across the capital, there's something reassuring about a location that, 100 years after it opened, remains almost unchanged. I last photographed the beautiful Cecil Brewer staircase inside Heal's Department Store nearly two years ago, and it had been even longer since I last captured the view looking upwards from the bottom of the spiral. Such a wide variety of compositions and finishes can be achieved by shifting the position of the camera just a few inches one way or another, or by adjusting the focal length of the lens by just a few millimetres, and the staircase's perfect geometric shape and the majestic pendant lights hanging from its ceiling mean it's always a joy to return to.
One detail I hadn't noticed during previous visits -- mostly because it's less noticeable from the top of the spiral -- is how the dozens of hanging lights are constantly swaying back and forth. As hypnotic as this was to watch, it was also challenging for this image, where I was hoping to blend multiple bracketed exposures for the cleanest possible finish. Although I was able to use luminosity masks in Photoshop to brighten the shadows along the staircase, the pendant lights contain traces of midtones as well as highlights, and as a result their constant movement -- even though this was almost imperceptible -- made it difficult for the frames to be perfectly aligned and to achieve a sharp finish. The only way to overcome this was to use a high ISO in order to keep the shutter speed fast, while at the same time holding onto a narrow aperture to ensure that the entire staircase and all of the suspended lights remained in focus.
The final result is a blend of eight exposures, with the darkest exposures for the lights and creating a natural vignette around the edge of the frame, and the brightest exposures restored along the underside of the stairs as they approach the ceiling. I liked how the moody and mysterious tone seemed to come from letting the repeating patterns be the dominant elements of the image, and for this reason I placed emphasis on the darker exposures, where the texture of the balustrade and the subtle mixture of light and shadow along each step in the staircase was best defined.
After editing out a couple of water sprinklers, as well as a small portion of the staircase in the upper-right of the frame which felt like a bit of a distraction, I used a mixture of Curves, Levels, Colour Balance, Hue/Saturation, Selective Colour and Gradient Map adjustments to shift towards a colder finish along the staircase, while using luminosity masks to retain the warmer tones inside the pendant lights. Inside Nik's Silver Efex Pro, which was set to the Luminosity blend mode so that the image would remain in colour, I gently lowered the midtone and shadow structure along the staircase in the foreground, while increasing the Soft Contrast that would help to play up each step's tonality. Finally, I added three low-opacity Colour Lookup presets -- Edgy Amber for the highlights, Foggy Night for the midtones, and Night from Day for the shadows -- and set each adjustment to Soft Light, which helped to emphasise the cold and slightly ethereal finish I'd been aiming for.
While the final result involved a lot of incremental editing to the tone and the light, I tried not to stray too far from the original details of the scene. The location is deservedly one of the most photographed staircases in London, partly because, even after a century, it looks stunning straight out of the camera.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.
Far Beyond the Stars
Amid London's ever-evolving skyline and the constant refurbishment work inside interiors across the capital, there's something reassuring about a location that, 100 years after it opened, remains almost unchanged. I last photographed the beautiful Cecil Brewer staircase inside Heal's Department Store nearly two years ago, and it had been even longer since I last captured the view looking upwards from the bottom of the spiral. Such a wide variety of compositions and finishes can be achieved by shifting the position of the camera just a few inches one way or another, or by adjusting the focal length of the lens by just a few millimetres, and the staircase's perfect geometric shape and the majestic pendant lights hanging from its ceiling mean it's always a joy to return to.
One detail I hadn't noticed during previous visits -- mostly because it's less noticeable from the top of the spiral -- is how the dozens of hanging lights are constantly swaying back and forth. As hypnotic as this was to watch, it was also challenging for this image, where I was hoping to blend multiple bracketed exposures for the cleanest possible finish. Although I was able to use luminosity masks in Photoshop to brighten the shadows along the staircase, the pendant lights contain traces of midtones as well as highlights, and as a result their constant movement -- even though this was almost imperceptible -- made it difficult for the frames to be perfectly aligned and to achieve a sharp finish. The only way to overcome this was to use a high ISO in order to keep the shutter speed fast, while at the same time holding onto a narrow aperture to ensure that the entire staircase and all of the suspended lights remained in focus.
The final result is a blend of eight exposures, with the darkest exposures for the lights and creating a natural vignette around the edge of the frame, and the brightest exposures restored along the underside of the stairs as they approach the ceiling. I liked how the moody and mysterious tone seemed to come from letting the repeating patterns be the dominant elements of the image, and for this reason I placed emphasis on the darker exposures, where the texture of the balustrade and the subtle mixture of light and shadow along each step in the staircase was best defined.
After editing out a couple of water sprinklers, as well as a small portion of the staircase in the upper-right of the frame which felt like a bit of a distraction, I used a mixture of Curves, Levels, Colour Balance, Hue/Saturation, Selective Colour and Gradient Map adjustments to shift towards a colder finish along the staircase, while using luminosity masks to retain the warmer tones inside the pendant lights. Inside Nik's Silver Efex Pro, which was set to the Luminosity blend mode so that the image would remain in colour, I gently lowered the midtone and shadow structure along the staircase in the foreground, while increasing the Soft Contrast that would help to play up each step's tonality. Finally, I added three low-opacity Colour Lookup presets -- Edgy Amber for the highlights, Foggy Night for the midtones, and Night from Day for the shadows -- and set each adjustment to Soft Light, which helped to emphasise the cold and slightly ethereal finish I'd been aiming for.
While the final result involved a lot of incremental editing to the tone and the light, I tried not to stray too far from the original details of the scene. The location is deservedly one of the most photographed staircases in London, partly because, even after a century, it looks stunning straight out of the camera.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.