I've had a few amazing photography club shoots in the last few weeks! One featured a beautiful setting highlighting the work of a talented artist. I will post images from that shoot soon.
Today I'm sharing images that I took at the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA.
I've lived in Pennsylvania for 39 years and have never visited the site until last Sunday. I've seen many ghost hunting shows that have been featured there, which heightened my level of anxiety, but I'm happy to report that not one ghost was spotted and although there are parts that are very creepy, it's really a very beautiful example of architechture and craftmanship. In other words, it's a photographers dream shoot, at least for those like me who love love working with interesting light, shadows and texture.
Here's a perfect example of what I mean:
I shot the entire day in RAW bracketing between 3 and 7 exposures. The light is ever changing and I didn't want to miss a thing.
This leaning door above in one of the cells as well as the table below are ones that highlight the shadows and light.
The wall with the fuse box and the cell with the tree grown through the wall (below) show layers of history.
One of the most iconic images in the prison is of one of the barber chairs.
There is a roof restoration project currently underway at the prison and there was a blue tarp covering parts of it. With a skylight located in most of the cells the blue cast was unavoidable and strong!
Here's the before and after of this shot:
I attempted unsuccessfully to remove the extreme blue cast in camera raw. Maybe it was something I was doing wrong or not doing. I tried a different approach.
In CS5 I dragged the background thumbnail layer to the create layer button on the bottom right of the layers panel.
Then I applied:
Filter>Blur>Average
This rendered the color cast represented in my photo on top of my photo. At this point my photo was hidden behind the solid blue cast. Since I wanted to apply the opposite of this color, I applied:
Image>Adjustments>Invert, to invert the blue cast to its opposite.
I used this opposite to offset the color cast in my photo. Since I only want to effect the color, I changed the blend mode, located in the top left of my layers panel, to "Color". This offset the color cast but it was showing just as strong as the blue cast, so all I had to do was adjust the opacity slider until the original color showed through. I then adjusted the hue/saturation to allow a little more color to show through. That's it!
As with so many things in photoshop there are many ways to do the same thing. In this case, for me, this was the easiest and quickest way and the cast was so extreme.
