Quartering a Window Taxi
Along 9th Avenue in downtown Calgary, Gulf Canada Square’s dark panes of glass often provide a large mirror that abstracts the traffic heading east on the one way road.
I watched traffic for a while, looking down from the 12th floor of Banker’s Hall, until this taxicab drove by distinctive and separated from the other vehicles in that moment. The slight curvatures of the glass did the real work to create this warp of a simple scene.
Sharing this post is welcomed - but please do not use individual images without permission from Christopher Martin in advance.
Bel Air Wreck on the Prairie
This beaten down shell is on a salt pan in the middle of a barren stretch of prairie near Gull Lake, Saskatchewan. The country roads that connect all parts of the Canadian prairie hold many long forgotten photographic treasures like this car, farmsteads and weathered buildings. I love finding these great locations and try to re-visit them whenever I can. I have visited this car and a neighboring broken down farm several times over the past five years.
With a little down time so far this holiday, I have been working with some different software to test them out. Here, I’m using Topaz Adjust 4 to process the photos for a saturated, over the top look. The software integrates seamlessly into Adobe’s Lightroom (my main developing and cataloging software) and is reasonably priced at $50. I am usually less garish in my post processing but it is nice to try some different looks.
In these images I have started with the Topaz Spicify preset as a starting point, then adjusted some of the levels to my taste within each picture and then re-imported into Lightroom to adjust some of the color channels and the edge smoothness.
Christopher Martin Photography 