Abstract cityscapes
The rapid growth of high-rise cities offered early 20th-century photographers fresh viewpoints and a new, graphic landscape. At the time, the emphasis was on technical purity combined with a more natural treatment, influenced by Modernist painting styles such as Cubism and Futurism. The greatest of cities was New York, which was most famously captured at this time by greats such as Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, who photographed the city's people as tiny, hurried figures. André Kertész used criss-crossing streams of people to form abstract imagery. Realism and abstraction combined in this new style of urban photography.
To replicate this style, the first thing to do is look for high viewpoints: rooftops, upper floor windows, bridges, or any other position in which people are walking below. Photograph toward the light, overexpose a little, and turn people into silhouettes.
With this viewpoint it can be hard to make tall buildings look perfectly vertical, particularly if you're using a wide-angle lens. And even when you hold the camera upright, or just decide to use these "converging verticals" in your composition, you might still miss the one person who walks right through the scene. Sometimes you wait an age for someone to appear. So why not assemble the image on computer?
The shapes formed by the wall and the zig-zagging lights lead the eye up to the apartment blocks. Unfortunately, no one walked into the pools of light on either the lower or upper levels.
Duplicate the original image layer, then correct the convergence by selecting Edit > Free Transform or Ctrl/Cmd + T. Hold down Ctrl/Cmd + Shift so the image will be skewed, and click and drag the top corners to straighten up the building. If it looks a little squashed, click and drag the top middle handle. When you're done, doubleclick inside the image to apply the transformation. Next, make the picture black and white. In the Layers palette, click the "Create new fill or adjustment layer" icon and select Channel Mixer. Check Monochrome and adjust the color channel sliders until you like the tonal balance. In general, they should add up to 100%. In this image, the Red channel produced marginally more contrast, cutting through the morning haze. Adjust the overall contrast by adding a Curves adjustment layer. Here I boosted the highlights but kept my adjustment away from the misty background by painting with black onto the adjustment layer mask. Open an image containing silhouetted people, roughly select them with the Lasso tool, then use the Move tool (V) to drag them into your cityscape. Make sure the people are at the top of the layer stack, as they are in color and it will be easier to hide or remove irrelevant detail. Click the "Add layer mask" icon in the Layers palette. By default, this mask should be activemake sure the icon is shown in the Layers palette. Select the Brush tool (B), choose a soft-edged brush of appropriate size, and set the Foreground Color to Black. (You can adjust the brush's size with the [and] keys, and softness by holding Shift and using the same keys-check the Tool Options bar to see the effect you're having.) Zoom in and paint around the figures. The soft-edged brush is especially useful in retaining the soft edges of the man's shadow. Use Edit > Transform to position the people in your composition. To emphasize the sense of alienation that is also apparent in some of Paul Strand's images, duplicate the man twice. Use Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal on one of the clones, and resize and rotate him a little. Once this basic composition is done, move the Channel Mixer-Monochrome and Curves-Contrast layers to the top of the layer stack and make any final adjustments. If you wish, add a platinum print tone (see page 54) and another layer with its blending mode set to Overlay. Use the Overlay layer to selectively lighten and darken the image. Paint black to darken the corners, pushing the eye into the picture. Lighten areas with white where you want to draw the eye to the man on the left and along the wall.
London's Barbican complex is a vibrant arts center, but its brutalist architecture can make it seem an isolated and unforgiving place to visit. |
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