Philadelphia: Gravity Assist

If you wanted to find some really good photo opportunities in Philly, you couldn't do much better than the area around the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Fairmount Water Works. Here's a strolling path that connects the museum, on higher ground, to the level of the Schuylkill River.

I took this photo in February with my Canon XSi, set to record Raw files. It looked OK in color, but the design elements of the repeating shadows and the curving path are what I really wanted to emphasize, so I converted it to B&W.

I used Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, a plugin for Photoshop (also available for Lightroom) to do the B&W conversion. This plugin also includes very controlled vignetting and edge burning, which I used to emphasize the child running down the path.