This image took me a few attempts before I captured exactly what I was looking for. I was up on the roof of the parkade taking the photo in my previous post when I turned to see this elevator “penthouse”. I don’t usually pre-plan my photos all that much…when I see something that catches my eye I photograph it from a few different angles with various framing options until I get what I want. But this time it was different, I knew I wanted it in black and white and I wanted a very minimalist, high contrast look of the white stucco on dark sky. I also really liked the soft shadows of the ladder on the wall directly behind it. Because the wall faces East, this had to be shot in the morning, before sunrise so the light was soft and defuse. I took a few photos on that first visit to the roof but there were some mechanical boxes on top of the building that were too distracting. So a few days later I returned to the roof and took a few more images. The angle of view was better and removed the rooftop distractions but I just couldn’t get the dark sky I wanted. So on my third visit to the roof, armed with a polarizer filter to darken the sky and make the white stucco “pop”, I believed got what I wanted. After spending some time processing the photo I am very happy with the result.
