Photo Recipe: Architectural Blueprint, step by step 
Sunday, November 28, 2010, 09:47 PM - Photo recipes
To create this, it is relatively easy once you found a suitable area to photograph. You need some big straight lines, and preferably some repetitive square patterns, like from windows, tiles,...

I used the inner structure of the Arche de la Défense, near Paris:



Shooting vertically inside this building provides a nice nearly symmetric pattern, with the roof tiles creating a background pattern:


(this one is shot with a fisheye (17mm), thus the distortion)

Find a good position:



I used my old 21mm Soligor lens, which has the advantage of featuring a nearly non-existent distortion.

Now, let's start the tricks...I placed a graduated sunset filter over the lens, in order to provide an orange gradation. This is a Cokin square filter (inside a P-size holder), which is quite easy to position over the big front element of this lens.



A graduated orange color might seems to be a strange idea, but once you turn the picture into negative, it starts to be quite neat:



White areas turned into black, and orange turned into blue (its complementary color). The pattern from the roof tiles now seems to glow in blue over black.

Tweak curves a bit in order to darken the "wings":



Reduce saturation in order to tune down the blue glow:



Add a final small tweak to curves, and clone out a big dust bunny over the front lens (which happens often when shooting vertically for a long time):



Now just add some borders, and here we are, a blueprint-like done from a real picture, with only minimal post-processing:



(picture from my 2009 pic a day gallery)

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