I have an Infinity Complex

Admitting it is the first step. Actually, this post is a study of The Infinity Complex in San Francisco. This is a neat complex with two spears and two shorter structures. I think it's residential, but I'm not certain. Stick around at the end for a couple of added bonuses. For many of the building shots I used lens distortion correction to bring the building back to proper proportions and unsharp mask layers (made somewhat transparent) to correct for the foggy, rainy day. The weather on Friday was awful and I spent a lot of time taking the UV filter off the lens because it had gotten rain on it. That's what a UV filter is for though: keeping rain and dirt off the lens so you can shoot clean.


Stepping off the Muni at Fulsom, I decided to open the roll with a Bay Bridge shot. It was shrouded in fog, like sleeping in on a winter day, wrapped in a comforter. The Bay Bridge's best public vantage point along Embarcadero is at Fulsom. From the Muni stop I also took a quick establish shot of the Infinity Complex.


The brick building in front, next to or perhaps part of the Hills Brothers Coffee building, is a wonderful structure with great angles and a simply great design: nothing unneeded, and nothing left needed.


Arquitectonica has designed some of the most visually appealing buildings in the world. The United States Federal Courthouse in Miami, The Gate in Abu Dhabi, and the Westin Hotel in Times Square are three notable examples. Arquitectonica and Heller Manus Architects designed The Infinity Complex and it is a striking addition to the San Francisco skyline. It would have been interesting to learn their design intent for this project, too.


I am not super thrilled with the coloration here. Very brown. And the photo isn't noteworthy enough to bend over backwards adjusting the curves. Included here to show a shorter side of The Infinity.


A nice example of barrel distortion in this shot. Interesting Infinity Complex factoid: During foundation excavation the construction company discovered a 19th-century whaling ship. I imagine that did the construction schedule no favors.


I removed a couple of light poles from this shot, but other than that it's pretty close to straight off the negative. Probably the best shot from a technical perspective on the roll. I was able to get it by climbing on top of a fence, holding my camera way above my head, and pointing it at the building. It was almost level, too. And sharp considering it was f11 or f16 and a fairly long exposure time (1/30th or 1/60th.)


Even when shooting a building, it's important to take time to photograph some flowers.


Have a good weekend!

Designs on Architecture

One of my 2012 goals is to determine if I can hold my own photographing buildings. Architectural photography, done well, presents some of the most interesting and striking images around. I'm not into photographic trickery, like high-dynamic-range images and substantial levels of image retouching. As art, extensive retouching has its place. But photo editing also robs people of the ability to learn photographic fundamentals and can make people worse photographers. For some of these photos, though, I needed to use Photoshop to correct some gear deficiencies. For instance, I do not own a tilt or tilt-shift lens. To accommodate this absence in my gear case, I used Photoshop's perspective control function to keystone some of the building shots below. I'll note that as a percentage next to the image capture data.


1/60th, f5.6, 35%. In order to prevent the perspective control from cropping the building top, I increased the canvas size about 15% in each direction and then distorted the image. A small rotation correction, as much as allowable without subject loss. This corrected some unevenness amplified by the distortion process. Lesson learned: photograph straight-on.


1/60th, f5.6, 8%. Hotel Vitale. Also increased the red and yellow saturations about 15% or 10% and dropped the blue and cyan saturations about 35%.


1/125th at f3.5. Digital monochrome conversion. In order to make this image turn out properly -- the sky was much brighter than the bus, -- I metered the bus and held the exposure lock button until taking the above shot.


1/640th, f5.3. Also used a wand mask, feathered to 18, on the bird. Dropped the bird mask and increased the exposure on that layer. Then dropped the offset on the back layer minorly and flattened the image.


1/320th, f11.


1/50th, f5.3, 24%. Let's end this post big with an above average reflection capture.

So here are a few lessons from this outing:
1- For building shots, to minimize distortion during perspective control processing, stand far back.
2- Leave space around the subject within the frame to minimize subject loss following perspective correction.