Otto Berkeley
Hourglass
This image was captured during the Canary Wharf Winter Lights festival, and on the same night that I photographed the "On Your Wavelength" installation by Marcus Lyall. Although this series of escalators inside Crossrail Place could have been photographed at any time, Canary Wharf security seemed to relax their stance on tripods during the recent event, and this was one of several shots that, at any other time of the year, I would probably only have gotten away with while shooting handheld.
The final image is a blend of eight bracketed exposures, combined in Photoshop using luminosity masks to produce the best possible finish in the shadows along the ground and ceiling while balancing the dramatic light between the escalators and from the upper level. This contrast of light was what drew me to the scene, as well as the reflections in the glass walls, which in reality are only on one side of the corridor but which I knew I would later mirror-flip to create the image in my mind. The challenge with mirroring the scene is that the ground in front of the escalator isn't symmetrical, as the vertical lines dividing the tiles do not perfectly align with the escalators, even when standing directly in front of the middle escalator. To correct this, I needed to create a Pen Tool selection of the ground and use the Distort, Perspective and Skew tools so that the central line would form a leading line into the middle escalator.
With the exposures blended and the perspective corrected, I blended in a shot I'd captured a few minutes after photographing the scene when it was empty, this time including a fellow photographer who was visiting several of the same installations that evening. Fortunately he chose the middle escalator, which seemed to give the scene a sense of scale and balance, but I also found his confidence very photogenic as he switched lenses and replaced lens caps, all while walking down a moving escalator.
I used the colour-grading phase of the editing process to emphasise the cold and futuristic aspect of the scene, applying Hue/Saturation, Colour Balance and Selective Colour adjustments to bring out the blues and cyans across the image, at the same time keeping some of the red and orange hues in the glass walls but toning down the warmer tones in the highlights at the top of the escalators. Finally, inside Nik's Colour Efex Pro, I used the Tonal Contrast filter to add a hint of clarity to the highlights, particularly in the escalators reflected along the ground, as well as the Low Key filter to darken the border of the frame, which I felt would enhance the drama and hopefully draw viewers' eyes towards the escalators and the individual.
The end result is very much a happy coincidence as I was visiting the area with the aim to photograph the Winter Lights installations and didn't think I'd stop to capture the corridors along the way. The architecture at Canary Wharf is such a joy to capture, however, that I'd probably use any excuse to pause and take in its creative geometry and clean modernism.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.
Hourglass
This image was captured during the Canary Wharf Winter Lights festival, and on the same night that I photographed the "On Your Wavelength" installation by Marcus Lyall. Although this series of escalators inside Crossrail Place could have been photographed at any time, Canary Wharf security seemed to relax their stance on tripods during the recent event, and this was one of several shots that, at any other time of the year, I would probably only have gotten away with while shooting handheld.
The final image is a blend of eight bracketed exposures, combined in Photoshop using luminosity masks to produce the best possible finish in the shadows along the ground and ceiling while balancing the dramatic light between the escalators and from the upper level. This contrast of light was what drew me to the scene, as well as the reflections in the glass walls, which in reality are only on one side of the corridor but which I knew I would later mirror-flip to create the image in my mind. The challenge with mirroring the scene is that the ground in front of the escalator isn't symmetrical, as the vertical lines dividing the tiles do not perfectly align with the escalators, even when standing directly in front of the middle escalator. To correct this, I needed to create a Pen Tool selection of the ground and use the Distort, Perspective and Skew tools so that the central line would form a leading line into the middle escalator.
With the exposures blended and the perspective corrected, I blended in a shot I'd captured a few minutes after photographing the scene when it was empty, this time including a fellow photographer who was visiting several of the same installations that evening. Fortunately he chose the middle escalator, which seemed to give the scene a sense of scale and balance, but I also found his confidence very photogenic as he switched lenses and replaced lens caps, all while walking down a moving escalator.
I used the colour-grading phase of the editing process to emphasise the cold and futuristic aspect of the scene, applying Hue/Saturation, Colour Balance and Selective Colour adjustments to bring out the blues and cyans across the image, at the same time keeping some of the red and orange hues in the glass walls but toning down the warmer tones in the highlights at the top of the escalators. Finally, inside Nik's Colour Efex Pro, I used the Tonal Contrast filter to add a hint of clarity to the highlights, particularly in the escalators reflected along the ground, as well as the Low Key filter to darken the border of the frame, which I felt would enhance the drama and hopefully draw viewers' eyes towards the escalators and the individual.
The end result is very much a happy coincidence as I was visiting the area with the aim to photograph the Winter Lights installations and didn't think I'd stop to capture the corridors along the way. The architecture at Canary Wharf is such a joy to capture, however, that I'd probably use any excuse to pause and take in its creative geometry and clean modernism.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.