Otto Berkeley
Ellipsis
Inside the Andaz Hotel in East London is this stunning six-storey staircase. The staircase pays delicate homage to New York's Guggenheim Museum and perfectly complements the architecture inside the luxury five-star hotel, which is housed inside a beautiful redbrick Victorian building outside Liverpool Street and which originally opened as the Great Eastern Hotel in 1884 as a purpose-built railway hotel.
Early-afternoon sunlight was streaming into the atrium when I visited. The hotel's staircase -- much like City Hall, Heal's and Newport Street Gallery -- is so beautifully designed by Conran and Partners that it's a delight to photograph from every angle. I spent nearly an hour shooting from top to bottom, but eventually fixated on a view looking upwards from a lower level, which I felt conveyed the drama of the bright light as well as the staircase's strong sense of repeating lines and geometry.
The image is a combination of seven exposures, shot handheld at a high-ish ISO and then manually aligned in Photoshop before being blended using a mixture of luminosity masks, gradient masks and the Pen Tool. I was drawn to the simplicity of the staircase, so when editing the image I removed elements that felt like distractions such as ceiling lights, smoke alarms and minor cracks in the walls, and tried to focus on the clean tonality created by the sunlight and the shadows. The exception was an inscription that winds along the underside of the ascending levels -- "The air seems to be filled with an intense creativity" -- which was so quirky and unique that I felt it had to stay. After this, I opted for a finish that bordered on monochrome, although I used Colour Balance adjustments with the Apply Image function as a layer mask to add a hint of blue and cyan to the midtones and shadows and a small amount of yellow to the highlights.
Inside Nik's Silver Efex Pro, I used the Dynamic Contrast and Soft Contrast sliders to gently enhance the brightness of the light overhead and the shadows along each level's ceiling. I also lowered the midtone and shadow structure, which softened the image and which seemed to add to the minimalist finish I was aiming for. Finally, inside Colour Efex Pro, I used the Pro Contrast filter to create a little more definition between the inside of each bright portion of the staircase and the darker tones along the ceilings.
This is one of the more straightforward scenes from London that I've photographed -- and indeed it was one of the easiest to edit -- but the simplicity and elegance of the architecture hopefully come across in the final image.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.
Ellipsis
Inside the Andaz Hotel in East London is this stunning six-storey staircase. The staircase pays delicate homage to New York's Guggenheim Museum and perfectly complements the architecture inside the luxury five-star hotel, which is housed inside a beautiful redbrick Victorian building outside Liverpool Street and which originally opened as the Great Eastern Hotel in 1884 as a purpose-built railway hotel.
Early-afternoon sunlight was streaming into the atrium when I visited. The hotel's staircase -- much like City Hall, Heal's and Newport Street Gallery -- is so beautifully designed by Conran and Partners that it's a delight to photograph from every angle. I spent nearly an hour shooting from top to bottom, but eventually fixated on a view looking upwards from a lower level, which I felt conveyed the drama of the bright light as well as the staircase's strong sense of repeating lines and geometry.
The image is a combination of seven exposures, shot handheld at a high-ish ISO and then manually aligned in Photoshop before being blended using a mixture of luminosity masks, gradient masks and the Pen Tool. I was drawn to the simplicity of the staircase, so when editing the image I removed elements that felt like distractions such as ceiling lights, smoke alarms and minor cracks in the walls, and tried to focus on the clean tonality created by the sunlight and the shadows. The exception was an inscription that winds along the underside of the ascending levels -- "The air seems to be filled with an intense creativity" -- which was so quirky and unique that I felt it had to stay. After this, I opted for a finish that bordered on monochrome, although I used Colour Balance adjustments with the Apply Image function as a layer mask to add a hint of blue and cyan to the midtones and shadows and a small amount of yellow to the highlights.
Inside Nik's Silver Efex Pro, I used the Dynamic Contrast and Soft Contrast sliders to gently enhance the brightness of the light overhead and the shadows along each level's ceiling. I also lowered the midtone and shadow structure, which softened the image and which seemed to add to the minimalist finish I was aiming for. Finally, inside Colour Efex Pro, I used the Pro Contrast filter to create a little more definition between the inside of each bright portion of the staircase and the darker tones along the ceilings.
This is one of the more straightforward scenes from London that I've photographed -- and indeed it was one of the easiest to edit -- but the simplicity and elegance of the architecture hopefully come across in the final image.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.