I found myself agape, admiring a sky-scraper the prow of the Flat-iron Building, to be particular, ploughing up through the traffic of Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the afternoon light. – H.G. Wells
I had seen many images of the Flatiron building prior to my visit to New York. However it wasn’t until I was walking through Madison Square Park and I saw it with my own eyes for the first time that I fell in love with it. I had spent the last few hours walking around Central Park, and visited Grand Central Station briefly, before deciding I needed to grab some food. My next stop was going to be a trip up the Empire State Building so I headed south to be in the right area, and my wanderings took me this far. It wasn’t really on my list of places to visit and I didn’t really know where it was either, so I was pretty happy when I stumbled upon it on that sunny Saturday afternoon.
I spent a bit of time working my way around it taking photos from different angles, the traffic and tourists a little bit too much for my liking. Conveniently there was also a street food market here so I was able to pick up an awesome burrito from Calexico Cart and sit in the shadow of the Flatiron to eat it (The following day I walked an 8 block diversion here to pick up another burrito, they were so good!).
This is the last image I’m processing using the Phototools software by OnOne. Yesterday I decided it was time I update my processing software so I’ve done a few updates and Phototools has been replaced by Perfect Effects 3 now I’m on version 6 of their Suite. I had tried it previously it but couldn’t get it to work properly on my machine, nor did I like the interface – but thought it time to give it another go. I also updated to the newest version of Photoshop.
So, here are my current processing tools and the order in which I generally use them:
Adobe Lightroom 4.1
Photomatix Pro 4.2 by HDRSoft
Adobe Photoshop CS6 (via Subscription)
Color Efex Pro 4 (Complete Edition) by Nik Software
Perfect Photo Suite 6.1 by OnOne Software (use ‘MURPHYZ’ for a 10% discount)
DeNoise 5.0.1 by Topaz Labs
Absolutely brilliant photo, love it.
Awesome processing on this icon Mike.
Incredible lighting and toning Mike! I’ve had similar issues with OnOne. PhotoTools was the only component that would ever work on any of my systems so I finally gave up when they migrated it to Perfect Effects 3.
awesome picture. Superb!
I really like the richness of this image that resulted from your processing, Michael. I just wish it had been possible to include a tad more of the foreground in the image to anchor the landmark building. Overall this is a great rendering of life in the city.
Wow this is an awesome tone mapped shot of the Flatiron building! loving your New York shots!