About Photography

City Steam

On a cold day in New York I was walking along Fifth Avenue and saw the steam rising from an open manhole where work was in progress.  As the steam rose in the air it blocked out most of the city and left only the distant tip of the Empire State Building visible against a cloudy sky.  I had the Sony DSC-RX100 camera with me and took a series of compositions.

I usually keep the RX100 set to a square crop in black and white mode.  It is also set to capture in both RAW and jpg.  The jpg version captures the scene as a black & white square, but the 16-bit RAW color version captures the entire visual information of the scene in case I want to change anything later.  Using a black & white viewing mode allows me to more clearly visualize the graphic composition of a scene.

I processed the image to the warm-toned look of a platinum print.