I’ve lived on Staten Island for some time now and I have never visited Forts Wadsworth. It is located right at the anchorage of the Verazanno Bridge on the north shore of Staten Island. It’s actually part of  the Gateway National Recreation Area which is actually in our National Parks system. The fort area itself was captured by the British in 1776 and remained in their hands until the American Revolution had ended. The area continued its intended purpose of protecting NY Harbor until the Navy left in 1994.

I know you all couldn’t be with me on my trip to Fort Wadsworth so I wanted to capture an image to put you there. These binoculars were set up along the walk way and I thought using them would be perfect. What you are looking at is Battery Weed on the bottom left and the Verrazano bridge in the upper right corner. The sky’s were very cooperative that day. The clouds added drama to a typical smoggy day. You can make out some of the smog if you look hard enough. The lens of choice was the Sigma 10-20mm. A favorite of mine, but I was worried I might make the bridge or the battery too small. Thankfully due to their proximity to me and their size things worked out just right. The openness of the sky to the top left you will have to gauge for yourself, but it having dramatic clouds to fill the void satisfied me.

I made sure to use a polarizer in the field. It wasn’t dire to add the polarization filter in NIK, but I felt it gave a bit more depth to the clouds. Other then that just a levels adjustment and a black point.

There was just a tad of fall color left in the rampant vines and weeds at the edge of concrete fence. Dealing with this issue is knowing what your camera sees. If you were there with me you could see into all these vines. It wasn’t the dark black you see. Knowing this and that my meter will normally expose for the highlights knocking down the shadows made this happen. Also architecturally speaking I didn’t want to point the lens directly up at the bridge causing the tower to look like it was leaning backward. So I kept it level and zoomed way out with the 10-20. Thankfully there was enough foreground to make this work. Normally if you don’t have a PC-shift lens to make this work you would have to be mid-level height wise with your architectural subject. I still got some pull from the top of the glass, but it appears negligible.

This one might be extreme for some. I tried my best to make the pole look straight, but then the bridge would look tilted. I had to choose (or not take the shot, but who are we kidding!?) The flag pole being my main subject I went with that. There are key elements here I was looking to capture as well. I took series after series of exposure for the flag to come out just right, I wanted to make sure I could get the father and son (just people in general for scale and subject matter), and also the converging lines. You can see how the flower bed runs to the bridge and the bridge across the image and then the pole takes you up. Love it.

Part of Battery Weed you see here. My close ups were shot using my Sigma 150mm macro. I love the field of view compression. I really wanted the dark shadows and the color of the roof top. I used a small boost in saturation (9 in NX2) and a black point to make sure those shadows were dark. The thing I love most about the image? The spiral staircase showing through the spire.

This image came from a smaller building below that was all beat down. Seeing the shadows and the selective light hitting it I knew I had to photograph it. Unfortunately the clouds turned to overcast soon after I saw it. I waited around for the light to change and quickly made my way back to the spot to take this buildings portrait. Unfortunately in these small photos it is hard to tell the immense detail I was trying to bring out. I will actually be doing a video follow up post showing how and what I did. Plus a zoomify option. The filter I used was ‘tonal contrast.’ It took only one filter to do the job.

Black and white?

Putting myself into the black and white mind set I found this door. It was ripe in detail and texture. Plus with the fading paint I wanted to make it look grungy. I turned to silver efex pro underexposing the image by a stop and then adding a selective blur vignette in color efex pro. I can choose my center for the blurring in color efex which made this image fully possible. I wanted to make sure the sign and door texture remained intact.

I tried to write a story with this one. Not sure if it worked; what do you think?