Coverage of the Barack Obama Inauguration

Here’s the story of how I captured the 42nd most interesting photo taken on flickr for January 22, 2009.

While sitting at work in the Tribune Tower, the TV was tuned into WGN’s coverage of the Inauguration. As I listen in, I couldn’t help but notice that it sounded just like a parade. People just chatting about things, filling air-time.

Just outside the tower, the Chicago Tribune is sponsoring a rally with two Jumbotron screens broadcasting the event for anyone to come and watch. Wanting to be part of the action, I go outside to take photos. I snap some shots. I am mildly pleased, but didn’t think I got any WOW shots.

A couple nights later I process the photos into HDR shots (I shot multiple exposures of the same scene and then mix them together into one image). They were turning out ok. Just about to turn off my computer, because it was 2am, there is one more image that I wanted to process. Most of my shots from that day were wide-angle shots, but this one is more tightly-composed. (see Step 1 below for the multiple exposures of this shot).

After processing the HDR, the blue color in the jumbotron just wasn’t jiving with the background. (See step 2 below for color HDR). The blue made the jumbotron REALLY pop. Like, pop way too much. There was so many other interesting things in this photo, like the Michigan Avenue bridge watch towers, and the great architecture (the London Insurance Building, Hard Rock Hotel, 333 N Michigan, and the Jewelers Building) that I didn’t want to diminish their impact. A black and white scene brings them all to the forefront to equal weight as partners to the Barack Obama broadcast.

The people just have a great dark heavy weight at the bottom framing out this shot. Normally in HDR shots, people are moving around in between the exposures. In this situation the people worked out great, because they were incredibly still. Mesmerized by Obama’s inauguration speech. Or maybe everyone was just frozen into place by the weather.

The grayscale image was still rather flat (see step 3 below). I did some adjustments with curves in Photoshop. See step 4. Actually, in my opinion I totally wonked out the curves much more than I normally do. But this shot looks better with the higher contrast. It brings out the snow much more.

Ends up this photo has caught on like wildfire at flickr. It was featured on the Explore homepage of flickr where the hottest photos of the day are featured. Right now it currently has 93 favorites–making it my sixth most favorited photo on flickr.

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