Otto Berkeley
Luminance
I was recently fortunate enough to visit Two Temple Place, a magnificent Victorian mansion situated along London's Embankment. The location's history dates back to the 1890s, when John Loughborough Pearson designed the lavish residence for affluent American William Waldorf Astor, and which today serves as a venue for a variety of cultural, philanthropic and corporate events.
Despite having only a brief amount of time to photograph the building, myself and fellow photographer Peter Li captured a mixture of staple shots and vantage points we hadn't seen before. I was captivated by this stained-glass window on the west side of the first floor's Great Hall, which depicts a scene from the Italian Alps and which was designed by Clayton and Bell, who at the time were the most prolific workshop for stained glass. Beyond the artistry of the glass and the symmetry of the patterned carvings along the wall, the muted external light that morning meant the colours from the glass were perfectly projected along the walls inside the building, creating a dreamy display of colour and light that I felt I had to capture.
The image is a blend of nine exposures, combined in Photoshop using luminosity masks for a finish that would bring out the detail in the shadows beneath the window while retaining the intricacy inside the stained glass. While I opted for a darker and moodier finish that captured the rich character of the location, it was also important to me to capture the nuances of the Hitch carvings at the end of the seats beneath the window, as well as the texture of the oak and mahogany surfaces. This was achieved by weighting the midtones and shadows in the scene towards the brighter exposures while preserving the highlights with the darker exposures, and then gradually toning both of these down until the image felt balanced.
Having blended the exposures, the colour-grading phase was largely about finding the right shade for the ground and walls inside the hall. Using a mixture of Hue/Saturation, Selective Colour, Colour Balance and Curves adjustments, I gently emphasised the mixture of red and orange tones, which seemed to convey both the inviting warmth of the location and the immense history of the building. At the same time, there was something striking about the blue inside the seats that complemented the warmer tones, so I tried to emphasis this with a hint of cyan within the shadows.
Inside Nik's Colour Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro, I targeted a sparing amount of the Detail Extractor filter to the vivid carvings on the seat ends, and then lowered the structure of the midtones and shadows across the rest of the image, as I felt that a softer finish would help to guide the viewer's eye towards the window and the vibrant colours along the walls, which for me were the focal elements. While the scene by Clayton and Bell depicted in the stained glass tells its own story of an Alpine landscape, the colours and the textures along every surface inside this stunning location seemed to be telling their own story.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.
Luminance
I was recently fortunate enough to visit Two Temple Place, a magnificent Victorian mansion situated along London's Embankment. The location's history dates back to the 1890s, when John Loughborough Pearson designed the lavish residence for affluent American William Waldorf Astor, and which today serves as a venue for a variety of cultural, philanthropic and corporate events.
Despite having only a brief amount of time to photograph the building, myself and fellow photographer Peter Li captured a mixture of staple shots and vantage points we hadn't seen before. I was captivated by this stained-glass window on the west side of the first floor's Great Hall, which depicts a scene from the Italian Alps and which was designed by Clayton and Bell, who at the time were the most prolific workshop for stained glass. Beyond the artistry of the glass and the symmetry of the patterned carvings along the wall, the muted external light that morning meant the colours from the glass were perfectly projected along the walls inside the building, creating a dreamy display of colour and light that I felt I had to capture.
The image is a blend of nine exposures, combined in Photoshop using luminosity masks for a finish that would bring out the detail in the shadows beneath the window while retaining the intricacy inside the stained glass. While I opted for a darker and moodier finish that captured the rich character of the location, it was also important to me to capture the nuances of the Hitch carvings at the end of the seats beneath the window, as well as the texture of the oak and mahogany surfaces. This was achieved by weighting the midtones and shadows in the scene towards the brighter exposures while preserving the highlights with the darker exposures, and then gradually toning both of these down until the image felt balanced.
Having blended the exposures, the colour-grading phase was largely about finding the right shade for the ground and walls inside the hall. Using a mixture of Hue/Saturation, Selective Colour, Colour Balance and Curves adjustments, I gently emphasised the mixture of red and orange tones, which seemed to convey both the inviting warmth of the location and the immense history of the building. At the same time, there was something striking about the blue inside the seats that complemented the warmer tones, so I tried to emphasis this with a hint of cyan within the shadows.
Inside Nik's Colour Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro, I targeted a sparing amount of the Detail Extractor filter to the vivid carvings on the seat ends, and then lowered the structure of the midtones and shadows across the rest of the image, as I felt that a softer finish would help to guide the viewer's eye towards the window and the vibrant colours along the walls, which for me were the focal elements. While the scene by Clayton and Bell depicted in the stained glass tells its own story of an Alpine landscape, the colours and the textures along every surface inside this stunning location seemed to be telling their own story.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.