The Waiting Room

By Jim Denham | Published January 31, 2013

f14, ISO200, 17mm, HDR, 8 Exposures (-5EV to +2EV)

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To be honest, the name of this room escapes me and it would seem it’s only function is for someone to sit here waiting or use the rest rooms, which are to both camera right and left. If you were going to sit and wait, there’s plenty to take in if you like to marvel at classic architecture.

Once again, we have the old wooden doors and white brick walls, similar to the gate area, but this room also includes a herringbone designed ceiling, built in mini-arches along the length of the room, wonderfully detailed trim around it and beautiful lamps which scatter light and shadow all around the ceiling area, showing off that detail work. If seeing upright wasn’t enough, the floor is so reflective that the scene is just as detailed upside down! Along with the beauty design work, the folks at the Union Depot set up the seating so that you are forced to look at their beautiful work, stacking these retro benches back-to-back in the middle of the room, facing out towards the wall.

I don’t know about you, but when processing HDR brackets, any incandescent or fluorescent lighting tends to make the image way too orange. In order to combat that, I like to use one of two presets in Perfect Effects 4 and they are applied depending on the tye of image. For the image above, the Blue Dawn preset was used, with much dilution – around a 30% opacity. The overall blue  tint cools off the scene without going too over the top. When using Blue Dawn, you really need to apply some texture boosting or tonal contrast to offset the soft look that goes along with it.

The other preset I use in these instances is Cyberpunk, but it’s more suited for images with lots of texture mixed with the incandescent light. It’s also very good for street scenes and urbex! Unlike Blue Dawn, the images sharpness is not softened using the Cyberpunk preset, but it’s a pretty potent one, so it only takes low doses to cool an image down quickly!

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  • http://lensaltiel.com/blog/ Len Saltiel

    Terrific capture Jim. Great leading lines and vanishing point. I have the same problem with incandescent light and use the individual color sliders in Lightroom to correct.

    • http://www.jimdenhamphotography.com Jim

      Thanks Len! I’m sure there are a number of ways to fix it – white balance, color sliders, etc.

  • http://www.chrisnitz.com Chris Nitz

    Nice use of symmetry here. I do admit, that big open space is prime for some RC Car racing action!

    • http://www.jimdenhamphotography.com Jim

      Oh man, that would have been awesome, especially with the lack of people in the building! Chalk that up to your next visit to the TC!

  • http://www.edithlevyphotography.com Edith Levy

    You are really rocking these images my friend. Love the composition, the processing…excellent.

    • http://www.jimdenhamphotography.com Jim

      That means a lot Edith – thank you!

  • http://www.richmcpeek.com Rich McPeek

    Sweet shot Jim! Love the pov and details in this one!

  • http://criswellphotography.com Michael Criswell

    Jim, this is my kinda shot! love it!

  • http://toadhollowphoto.com Toad Hollow Photo

    Wow, Jim, great balance in details here with perfect management of the lighting in the scene. You’ve done a perfect job post-processing it to really bring all those great textures and patterns out!

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