Bukit Nanas Heritage Mansions - a panoramic perspective.

This row of heritage style mansions in Bukit Nanas, Kuala Lumpur have been slowly crumbling and decaying over the last many years and will no doubt at some point disappear for good. I wanted to capture this historic architecture and try to create a panoramic image to fully image the fine details of these classic buildings. To do this I used a 17mm tilt-shift lens and captured a total of 106 individual images (16 framed shots each with 7 bracketed images to fully capture the dynamic range of the scene). The images were post-processed in Apple Aperture then tone-mapped in PhotoMatixPro plugin. 

The final images were then converted to black and white and selective colour brushed in using Aperture to highlight some specific parts of the image. 

The individual resulting 16 images were then stitched using AutoPanoPro. The stitching result is not ideal given the geometry of the buildings and the location of my camera setup but it certainly gives you a real sense of the geometry and design of the structure. 

The final panorama was imported into FotoMagico to create the short slideshow sequence as shown in this video.

Camera: Canon 5D MkIII

Lens: Canon EF17mm f/4.0 TS-E

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 17mm

Aperture: f/8

No of Brackets: 7 (-3 to +3)

Life In A Bubble

The London Eye is a popular tourist visit and provides some stunning views over central London. This image I took was processed to a black and white image and then the colour brought back into the passenger bubble for effect.

The Guardian of The Gate

This imposing statue at the entrance of a Ubud Palace (Puri Saren) on Bali appears to be like a guard on duty preventing the entry of any unwanted guests.

Puri Saren Ubud (Ubud Palace) is an Ubud Kingdom Palace with beautiful Balinese traditional houses as a residence of the Ubud King. It is set in the center of Ubud Bali with a traditional art market just in front of it and was founded by Ida Tjokorda Putu Kandel who commanded from year 1800 - 1823. 

Rusty Cycle

Walking along the beach you never know what you are going to come across with a multitude of discarded objects being washed ashore. This old bicycle was seriously eroded and rusted so I thought this would be a good candidate for a little black and white post-processing with SilverEfex Pro then bringing back some selected colors to the rusty frame.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The Guggenheim is one of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The museum features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists.

One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture" because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something." The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.

Prinsengracht Canal

This is a view along the Prinsengracht canal or Princes Canal with the Westerkerk (Amsterdam's tallest church) seen in the background and on the left one of the buildings is the famous Ann Frank House. Many of the buildings along the canal were built during the Dutch Golden Age, a period spanning the 17th century when Dutch trade, science, military and art where the most acclaimed in the world. This canal is the fourth and longest of the canals in Amsterdam and is named after the Prince of Orange.

Ronde Lutherse Kerk

This lovely building can be seen on Singel, Amsterdam and provided a good opportunity to use Silver Efex Pro 2 to post-process the image into an antuique style photo. 

The church was designed by Adriaan Dortsman (ca. 1636-1682) and was opened in 1671. The organ was built by J Batz in 1830 and it was restored in 1983 by Flentrop Orgelbouw. In 1882 it was rebuilt after a fire. In 1935 the Lutherans left the building and it became a concert hall.

In 1975 a tunnel was built by the neighboring Sonesta Hotel, today called the Renaissance Amsterdam Hotel, for its own access. The hotel rents the church from the Lutheran church which is still the owner today. In 1983 the church was closed for a long period of restoration, but ten years later in 1993 the dome burned again. The church was again restored.

Today curious visitors and potential customers may enquire at the Renaissance hotel for an opportunity to view the church, which is not open for the public. A security guard must accompany visitors through the underground tunnel to the church where the ground floor of the consistory has been converted to bathrooms and the upper floor to a meeting room. Of the main hall, the impressive columns, galeries, organ and pulpit can still be seen.

Red Phone Box

These classic old red phone boxes can still be seen in a few locations and this one was photographed in the small village of Plockton in north west of Scotland. This image was post-processed using Silver Efex Pro 2 from Nik Software and the red colour of the phone box recovered back to create impact.

High & Dry

This is the small remote village of Toscaig in on the west coast of Scotland on the Applecross peninsula and this bright blue boat stood out having been left high and dry at low tide. This image was post processed in Nik Software's HDR EfexPro 2 and Silver Efex 2 applications.

Be Warned - Penalty of Forty Shillings

Walking through the small village of Plockton in north west Scotland I came across a small cottage with this beautiful white picket fence gate and two rather amusing signs. With the little black and white dog peeking through the slats, the final image was captured. I love it when it all comes together like this. It takes patience and an awful lot of luck!

SilverEfexPro 2 - Initial Review

I have been using SilverEfexPro now for some time and have been very impressed by it's capabilities and performance so when Nik Software announced they were releasing SilverEfexPro 2 I was on their pre-order waiting list immediately. It was released just a few days ago and I have done some initial tests of the new features which are summarised below:

1. Intuitive History Browser
2. Structure and Fine Structure
3. Soft Contrast
4. GPU Processing
5. Dynamic Brightness
6. Natural Image Borders
7. Specially Developed Algorithms
8. Amplify Black and Whites
9. Selective Colour

The above image, which is another early morning photo taken at Putrajaya, was really a quick test image where I tried out some of the new features including the very useful selective colour feature. I was pleased with the added control on tonality and structure and the border feature is a welcome addition for finishing your print. The interface seems a little quicker, probably due to the multi-threaded, 64 bit GPU processing. Check out all of SilverEfexPro 2 features here and you can always download a trial version for 15 days to test it out. It probably ranks as one of the best if not the best black & white processing software and one which is firmly embedded in my workflow. I use it as a plugin to Aperture so it really is very easy to export to the application and then save the finished black & white image without leaving Aperture.

For comparison the original image is below.

Monochrome Girl

This is not a post-processing edit ... this girl is actually black and white and made up to act like a statue in the centre of Innsbruck, Austria. I liked the contrast between the black and white girl and the colourful flowers in the window boxes in background.

Above the Glaciers

Above the Frans Josef and Fox glaciers on the west coast of the south island of New Zealand lie scenic snow fields running up to the west side of Mount Cook. This area is popular with climbers and skiers and there are a number of helicopter companies who arrange flights up and around Mount Cook and over the two glaciers.

Black & White

Even in the modern digital age black & photography still has a magical appeal to many people and can dramatically change the drama and impact of a photograph. Many of the modern digital SLR cameras have pre-set settings to generate black & white or sepia toned pictures to offer this capability but a far better way to do this is to do this in the post-processing phase.

I always take RAW format photos which allows me the ability to do some post-processing adjustments where needed such as exposure, white balance, etc. Although these RAW images are full colour, using a powerful black & white post processing software such as Silver Efex Pro from Nik Software, I can generate a large variety of black & white image effects.

Silver Efex Pro offers the power to control professional quality black & white images with patented U-Point technology to selectively control tonality and contrast in the image, a state-of-the-art grain engine to recreate traditional style black & white images, emulation of many popular film types and stylizing of images with popular tints and toners.

Let's look at how we do the black & white processing .... here is an original colour image of the famous Taj Mahal at Agra in India.

Silver Efex Pro is a plug-in to Aperture so we simply select Images, Edit With, Silver Efex Pro to bring up the application.

The default view is as below with a neutral black & white effect.

Or we can split the screen with the original colour and black & white effect.

We can then choose a number of pre-set effects from the left hand column, such as the High Structure effect as shown here.

Here are another two examples:

Dark Sepia

Antique Plate

Alternatively we can change the individual settings for brightness, contrast, structure, colour filters, film types or stylizing. We can adjust grain to reproduce an "antique" film effect. We can also add in control points to adjust brightness, contrast and structure in specific areas of the image which can be useful for example to reduce blown-out areas as shown in the example below where the top right of the Taj Mahal dome is over exposed. Each control point has individual sliders for brightness, contrast and structure as well as the area of influence.

The finished image produces a dramatic black & white effect as seen below.