George Peabody Library - Baltimore, MD, USA

The George Peabody Library (of the Peabody Institute, which includes one of the nation's foremost music conservatories, and which is part of Johns Hopkins University) is widely regarded as one the most beautiful libraries in the United States.

I'd long wanted to photograph the place, and managed to get over there yesterday afternoon and spent some time taking pictures.

One the minus side, access to the stacks is restricted, so I couldn't get the vantage point I'd been hoping for. (I could almost certainly have gone up the "Staff Only" stairs, and photographed away, without anyone noticing for some minutes. But I decided I'd act responsibly and obey the rules. I'm sorry if that costs me photographic street cred with some people.)

On the plus side, while I'd previously been told that tripods were forbidden, when I asked the librarian upon my arrival, he told me that a tripod would be okay. Moral of this story? Always seek out that second opinion. Other moral of this story? Always keep a tripod in your car, just in case. (I always have my old Bogen 3001, in the trunk.)

And a tripod was definitely handy. Not just because it permitted more careful composition than would've been possible handheld, but because I was looking at shutter speeds of around 1 second @ f/8 @ ISO 100. And my K10D's in-body image stabilization is good, but 1 second is still an unacceptably long time for handheld exposures.

Yeah, I could've bumped the ISO up to 800, and opened the lens (the 18-55mm kit lens) up to f/3.5, but that still would've had me shooting at around 1/30 sec., and I'd rather shoot at ISO 100 than at ISO 800, at f/8 than at f/3.5 (in this instance), and on a tripod at 1 second rather than handheld at 1/30 second.

The lighting was also very tricky. There were some areas well illuminated primarily by sunlight, and other areas relatively poorly illuminated and relying on incandescent bulbs. Big range of brightnesses there, even on a cloudy/rainy day like yesterday. And, of course, the temperature of sunlight is very different from the color temperature of the bulbs, so balancing those two took a little doing, too.

I'm going to work on the picture more in Photoshop, but isn't that always the case?

This picture is a pano, consisting of 8 individual images (taken in vertical orientation, and at 18mm) stitched together. Had to go the pano route, as 18mm wasn't anywhere near wide enough to get the image I had in mind. The picture loses a lot being resized and saved as a compressed jpg, but there's no way I'm going to post a 200MB 8000x4000 tif file, you know?

Anyway, the library is really gorgeous; this picture doesn't begin to do it justice. If you have any interest in architecture at all, and you happen to find yourself in Baltimore, it's definitely worth a visit. (If you're not much interested in architecture, but you like taking pictures, Peabody is right in Mt. Vernon, which is an extremely "photo rich" environment. So run in and take a look as long as you're there.)



--
Michael

[LaRee]

WOW Michael. This is quite a shot! What a stunning library! It seems just a tad oversharpened for my taste. But that may just be from resizing, or viewing on screen. Have you printed this? I really love this. It must have been quite a feat to stitch together!

[Damn Brit]

Beautiful work Michael and thanks for the detailed description.

[madmikess]

I think it looks fantastic. I'd love to see this place if I ever get a chance. Great job on the stitching.

[12345Michael54321]

To update -

I emailed the library the other day, asking if they'd make an exception and let me photograph the place from the stacks.

The librarian with whom I dealt last week responded to the email, saying he remembered me. He explained that he was having a bad day when I was there, otherwise he'd have given me permission, and he felt bad afterward that he hadn't let me shoot a few photos from the stacks. He said I should let him know when I'll be dropping by, and so long as I sign a waiver and let him accompany me, there won't be any problem with my photographing from wherever I like.

He added that the "yahoos" who go upstairs, ignoring the signs, get escorted out by security. But someone who goes to the trouble of politely asking for permission usually receives it.

Very decent of him, I think.

I'd hoped to make it there today, as I was in Baltimore in the afternoon. But things came up. I don't want to do the shoot tomorrow or Saturday, as the skies are supposed to be gray (like they were the last time I was there), and I'd like to see blue sky through the skylight. I'll probably go one day next week, whenever the forecast is for sunny weather, and I can fit the couple of hours into my schedule.

Anyway, I'll probably be combining some HDR shooting, with some pano stitching, on next week's effort. (Without going the HDR route, I'll have big problems with a sky that'll be many stops brighter than most of the library interior.)

LaRee - The full resolution .tif doesn't look over-sharpened, and I'm actually pretty sensitive to such things. (So many photos on the web are sharpened to within an inch of their lives, the rationale presumably being "If a little sharpening is good, a ton of sharpening can only be better!") So even if the jpg is just a little over-sharpened, chalk it up to the fact that I don't devote quite as much time and effort to getting the sharpening just so when it comes to much reduced and compressed jpgs posted online somewhere.

And as for it being a job to stitch it together, naw, not really. I shoot lots of panos, some of them truly huge in size. But my desktop computer is a quad core, with plenty of RAM, so I no longer have to wait hours for tasks involving very, very large images to complete. (The first time I realized I'd been waiting around for 10 minutes, just to rotate a pano 2 degrees counterclockwise in CS3, I knew there was a newer, faster computer in my immediate future.)

Damn Brit - Thanks for appreciating the description. A nice picture is a nice picture, and that's all well and good. But I do prefer seeing at least some technical detail and maybe relevant non-technical background about the shot, when it's a picture posted to a photo board for comment or critique. So I try to give some background when I post a picture of my own.
--
Michael

[pop4]

Beautiful shot of what looks to be a lovely place. Well done on the stitching of the pano too.

Have you showed the librarian the shot? He might be suitably impressed enough to allow even more freedom of movement to shoot within the library.

[cupic]

Spectacular shot Stunning


cheers

[vievetrick]

Great shot and information/

[scott-devon]

Beautiful shot and wow.....that is one gorgeous library. All those books..I could be very happy there....

[mithrandir]

Michael,

You have given me another place to shoot next time I am in Baltimore. Wonderful picture, I doubt I could do anywhere as well. Please keep posting.

[nupentaxian]

amazing photo and library with no1 in it

[Bramela]

A great indoor shot of a very impressive building. Very interesting and very well done!

[Peter Zack]

A great story with the picture. Thanks for taking the time to write so much detail about a place many of us may never see other than in your fantastic image. This is an incredible shot. Excellent lighting and detail.

You should submit the image to the PPG without question.

Next time someone complains about the quality of the 18-55mm, this shot will be used as an example of the excellent stuff the lens can do with practice.

Stunning shot. Good thing you followed your hunch and didn't become another "Yahoo". Now you get the chance to shoot there again at your leisure from some other interesting vantage points instead of being escorted out.

[dadipentak]

This Baltimorean salutes you!

[Jimbo]

What a excellent story and photo... Love the shot.. JIMBO