I’m not sure why I’m so fascinated with shooting metro stations but I’ve been seeking out interesting ones for a few years now. There’s just something special about controlled lines of symmetry and the orderly chaos of interesting angles and shapes. It may also be the fact that aside from crowd mitigation, a specific time of day has no effect on the look of the photo. Blue hour, sunrise, sunset, snow, fog, clouds – who cares… For a photographer like me who always carefully considers how the time of day will influence a location, I have to say that shooting underground — in a 100% controlled and static lighting environment — is pure awesomeness. You can literally spend an entire shooting in metro stations – something I often find myself doing while armed with an arsenal of strongly caffeinated canned beverages.
So one late night while I was exploring the metro system in Prague, I happened upon this particular station. With what must have been the perfect blend of late night fatigue and an overdose of caffeine, I swore I had stumbled into some sort of subterranean alien mothership. Considering all of the strange lifeforms wandering around down there after 2am, it might have actually been true. 😉
Technical Mumbo Jumbo
Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: 14-24 f/2.8 (Shot at 18mm)
Tripod: RRS TVC-33 / BH-55 Ballhead / RRS L-Plate
ISO: 100 at f/8
5 Exposure Brackets
Location: Shot in Prague, Czech Republic – July 2012 and post-processed in Fukuoka, Japan – April 2013
Hardware: 15” 2013 Macbook Pro Retina, Wacom Intuos5 Small Tablet
Software: Lightroom 4.3, Photoshop CS6, Nik Color Efex Pro 4, Nik Sharpener Pro
Technique and Details: All 5 exposure brackets blended manually in Photoshop. I then used the clone stamp to remove some scattered trash on the floor before applying selective sharpening with Nik Sharpener Pro. Additional color corrections were applied using Adjustment Layers.
Espresso: Too many Boss Coffees. 🙂
