Yesterday, I was in Manchester and needed to visit the Central Library. If you have never been, it’s a fantastic place to see. I used to go there back in the 1980’s on my lunch break, and whilst it’s been modernised, it still has a unique character.
Anyway, whilst I was there, I began spotting all kinds of wonderful photo opportunities; except I didn’t have a camera with me. And that’s when it hit me. I haven’t done any street or urban photography since before COVID. In fact, the last thing I can find was a trip to Liverpool in May 2019, which is where I took the following shot of the Liver Building.
Whilst this may look like a long exposure image, it isn’t. I just processed it to look that way. It’s a 1/250 second exposure at f/10.0. I shot it with my Fuji XT3 and Fuji 18-135 lens. Everything else was done using Photoshop.
To create the effect, I cut the building out so that I could replace the sky with an empty black layer. I then drew a cloud and used the Motion Blur filter to create the long exposure effect. The building was changed to black and white using a black and white profile in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). ACR was also used to reduce the exposure to darken the image before adding the spotlight to the building with a Radial Blur filter.
Whilst this is far from my best urban image, it’s given me the push to get back out there with a camera.
I hope you like the image and have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 