Otto Berkeley
Limitless
I last photographed the atrium inside CityPoint nearly three years ago, so it was a pleasure to revisit the location recently with fellow London photographer Andy Cladingboel and to capture it again. The 35-storey skyscraper is remarkable for being the first in the City to rise above the height of St Paul's Cathedral when it was built in the 1960s, and although it hasn’t changed since its refurbishment in 2000, the building remains one of the most beautiful examples of contemporary architecture in London.
My main aim with this look-up was to set it apart from my previous take, muting the colour and adding more emphasis on the patterns and geometry for a sleeker and more streamlined edit. The final image was created from nine bracketed exposures, captured while the camera was resting flat on the ground and triggered by shutter remote, and later blended with luminosity masks inside Photoshop. The skylight detail was restored using my darker exposures, and although I recovered some shadow detail in the glass surrounding the skylight, I opted for a darker finish around the edge of the frame in order to emphasise the scale and depth of the building.
The main challenge was finding a clean method to select and brighten the various panels and support frames that rise up through the building, as these contained a mixture of shadows, midtones and highlights that couldn't be isolated with luminosity masks. I wanted to play up these leading lines as I felt that their contrast from the glass was key to the scene's impact, but it meant that each of them had to be cut one by one with the Pen Tool. I then applied my brighter exposures to these selections, setting them to the Screen blend mode and using a radial gradient mask to focus the intensity of the brightness on the centre of the image. With the exposures blended, the colour-grading phase was straightforward and subtle, with only Curves, Hue/Saturation and Colour Balance adjustments to add some light cyan to the shadows and a hint of warmth to the highlights, along with a Selective Colour adjustment to add a shade of magenta to the blue tone.
Opening Nik's Silver Efex Pro, I edited the glass panels, the supports and the outer edges of the frame with separate workflows, amplifying the white at the centre of the frame while increasing the Soft Contrast along the edges. I tried to strike a balance between emphasising the scene's vivid light and the dark tonality of the glass, but I also wanted to avoid a finish that would feel too harsh, so I opted for a gentler midtone and shadow structure, playing up the reflections but leaving much of the detail inside the windows obscured. The final result is a simpler take on a look-up I've now gone back to several times over the years, but it's one that hopefully captures the abstract quality of the skyscraper's architecture, and one that was a joy to revisit.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.
Limitless
I last photographed the atrium inside CityPoint nearly three years ago, so it was a pleasure to revisit the location recently with fellow London photographer Andy Cladingboel and to capture it again. The 35-storey skyscraper is remarkable for being the first in the City to rise above the height of St Paul's Cathedral when it was built in the 1960s, and although it hasn’t changed since its refurbishment in 2000, the building remains one of the most beautiful examples of contemporary architecture in London.
My main aim with this look-up was to set it apart from my previous take, muting the colour and adding more emphasis on the patterns and geometry for a sleeker and more streamlined edit. The final image was created from nine bracketed exposures, captured while the camera was resting flat on the ground and triggered by shutter remote, and later blended with luminosity masks inside Photoshop. The skylight detail was restored using my darker exposures, and although I recovered some shadow detail in the glass surrounding the skylight, I opted for a darker finish around the edge of the frame in order to emphasise the scale and depth of the building.
The main challenge was finding a clean method to select and brighten the various panels and support frames that rise up through the building, as these contained a mixture of shadows, midtones and highlights that couldn't be isolated with luminosity masks. I wanted to play up these leading lines as I felt that their contrast from the glass was key to the scene's impact, but it meant that each of them had to be cut one by one with the Pen Tool. I then applied my brighter exposures to these selections, setting them to the Screen blend mode and using a radial gradient mask to focus the intensity of the brightness on the centre of the image. With the exposures blended, the colour-grading phase was straightforward and subtle, with only Curves, Hue/Saturation and Colour Balance adjustments to add some light cyan to the shadows and a hint of warmth to the highlights, along with a Selective Colour adjustment to add a shade of magenta to the blue tone.
Opening Nik's Silver Efex Pro, I edited the glass panels, the supports and the outer edges of the frame with separate workflows, amplifying the white at the centre of the frame while increasing the Soft Contrast along the edges. I tried to strike a balance between emphasising the scene's vivid light and the dark tonality of the glass, but I also wanted to avoid a finish that would feel too harsh, so I opted for a gentler midtone and shadow structure, playing up the reflections but leaving much of the detail inside the windows obscured. The final result is a simpler take on a look-up I've now gone back to several times over the years, but it's one that hopefully captures the abstract quality of the skyscraper's architecture, and one that was a joy to revisit.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.