Ode to Black | Black Hope III – This is the second image of this building. You can find here the first one, Mystical. This image is a long exposure image and one of the best examples of what I call “making the world look perfect”.

 

To better understand what I mean by that you should see the RAW version of this image, which is the “reality” and then see the processed one, which is “my reality”.

I will make a demonstration of how I worked on this image at the Athens Workshop next month, so whoever will be there will perfectly understand what I mean by making the world look perfect, which is practically the philosophy behind my way or interpreting the world in my images. In short, and speaking about buildings, every building is conceived to look in a certain way by the architect.

Many times, from the initial idea to its realization there is a long way that changes the first image of the architectural object, the “ideal” one. Then, once built and left exposed to fight the elements: rain, or sun, or wind, or simply the years that go by, the building changes again, sometimes not for the best. In the old historical buildings, this aging has a certain charm and shows history, telling their story and I love that, but for the modern buildings, the aesthetic is different.

What I try to do when photographing modern architecture is to search and show the best moment in time that the building has lived and this means trying to improve in any way its present aspect. I’ve been asked many times what I do to make my buildings look “perfect”. I will try to explain this at the workshop and this image was the best possible example, since it was shot up-close and from an angle that showed all the signs of time. Which, I can tell you, were quite evident.

TECHNICAL DATA

Camera settings:

285.0 sec. @ f/11, Tamron 16-270mm f/3.5-6.3 AF VC PZD @ 18mm, ISO 100.

Processing:

LR4, PS CS5, NIK Silver Efex Pro 2, Topaz B&W Effects  (Topaz Labs B&W Effects 2 Full Review) +Topaz DeNoise + Topaz Detail

Update 2013

Adding a few pieces of  info to this post, since in the meanwhile (this post was written last year), this image has become part of a series that won Bronze and Honorable Mention in two categories (Advertising & Fine Art) at PX3 2013 – Prix de la Photographie de Paris  and the series has evolved into a very personal study that uses buildings as subjects to express my personal experiences and reactions to the world I come in contact with. More about this in the last post I did about this series: Ode to Black | Black Hope V – Persona Black

See the entire final series here: Ode to Black | Black Hope