Shell Haus
This is my rendition of the Shell Haus in Berlin, Germany
This is my rendition of the Shell Haus in Berlin, Germany
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Apr, 2016Views
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Awards
Contest Finalist in My Favorite Building Photo Contest
Member Selection Award
Contest Finalist in A World Of Blue Photo Contest
Summer Selection
Peer Award
Superb Composition
Outstanding Creativity
Absolute Masterpiece
Top Choice
Magnificent Capture
All Star
Superior Skill
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PRO+
adavies
May 22, 2016
Very cool! Nicely done! If you haven't done so already, please consider joining my Illusions challenge:)
viewbug.com/challenge/illusions-photo-challenge-by-adavies
viewbug.com/challenge/illusions-photo-challenge-by-adavies
danzarate
June 12, 2016
Welcome to the Group. Keep on sharing your beautiful photos! May you have a wonderful day.
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Herbert_A_Franke
May 03, 2018
exellent composition, very good image editing and very nice presentation.
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marzenego
July 01, 2019
Fantastico. I wander how it would look like if there were no clouds at all, just a perfect blue sky. Bravo.
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photo at the Shell-haus in Berlin, Germany located in the Tiergarten district along the Landwehr Canal. I had seen several amazing photos taken at this location and decided to try my hand at it. It is not difficult to take a nice photo of this building, but challenging to take an amazing photo of the Shell-haus.Time
This is definitely one of the best photos I have taken and subsequently has become quite popular. I remember wandering around in the area during midday searching for the building only to find this unsuspecting structure that didn't look half as nice in person as many of the photos portrayed. I set up my tripod hoping that I could get the right "straight up" angle to achieve the shot I wanted. It was a lot more challenging to get a perfectly vertical shot than one might imagine.Lighting
The lighting was a bit tricky considering the angle of the building in relation to the sun at midday. I wanted to achieve a uniform light on the building and an absence of shadows due to the sort of finished photo I desired. Luckily I was able to get a vertical shot on a piece of the building where the lighting was uniform and did not illuminate the building in one spot too brightly.Equipment
For this shot I used a Canon 70D with the 10-18mm wide angle lens attached. Despite being a lower quality lens than my others, I wanted to ensure that I had a nice wide shot to work with for more flexibility. I had my camera attached to my ProMaster tripod, which was poorly designed to capture vertical shots as the notch on the ball head is not machined enough to get the camera to point directly straight up. Nonetheless, I was able to get almost completely vertical enough so that I could fix the photo with relative ease in post-processing.Inspiration
I had seen several photos of this location including one that was very similar and it inspired me to take on the challenge of capturing it for myself. I had never done a photo like this one before, and I felt like it was a great opportunity to test my skills. I take a great deal of architecturally-themed photographs and knew that if I did this photo well then it would help me move to the next level of photography. In addition, I knew it would serve as a learning experience regardless of the outcome.Editing
This photo represents some of the most arduous post-processing that I have ever undertaken. First of all, the photo was not perfectly upright so I had to cut the original into pieces and tediously adjust it so that subsequent layers would match. This is obviously a manipulation, and in cutting apart the original photograph, duplicating, layering, and turning I realized that not getting the shot completely upright made it considerably more difficult to get all the layers to align properly. All said and done the photo took me somewhere between 6-8 hours to edit in Photoshop.In my camera bag
In my backpack I always carry my camera and all of my lenses, which is now all Sony equipment, but at the time was Canon. I carry 2-3 extra memory cards in case one or more gets filled or in the unlikely event that one fails to work properly. In addition to extra memory cards, I always carry extra batteries because sometimes I forget to charge one or maybe take a lot more photos in one outing than anticipated. Attached on the outside I carry my ProMaster tripod with an optional gimbal head in case the situation calls for a panorama or an angle best suited for the use of a gimbal. I also carry cleaning cloths as well as a remote trigger to avoid movement when shooting long exposures or HDR photographs.Feedback
The city of Berlin is not only filled with history but has some amazing architecture. Out of all the places I have visited Berlin seems to be the place where I always feel inspired by all the unique places to photograph. In addition, the amount of amazing photography that comes from other photographers located in Berlin forces me to always push the limits of my skills and become better. My advice to others is to always push your own limits so that you're always progressing and learning new skills, techniques, and processes. Every experience is a learning experience regardless of success or failure. Go out and experiment, try and duplicate photographs others have taken at first and this will help you not only develop your own vision but will help you adapt that vision to other things that have not yet been done.
