This shot was taken two weeks ago only a few days after the opening of London’s newest spiral staircase. A must to add to my collection. The Wellcome Collection exhibit gallery on Euston Road went through a major renovation which included this new steel spiral staircase. The stairs were designed by Stirling Prize-winning architects Wilkinson Eyre.

The stairs lend themselves to B&W photography and I decided to go for a high key look.
The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens at 13 mm.. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. The ISO setting was 640 to give a fast enough shutter speed in the light. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image saved as tiffs. HDR processing was in Photomatix using Fusion Real Estate for a natural look.

This picture was enhanced with Topaz Detail, Topaz Denoise and photoshop levels and curves. Mono Conversion was done with Topaz BW Effects using a High Key preset. Further editing was done in Photoshop for crop and viginette.

The picture was given more punch using a clarity effect using unsharp mask with settings of 36 amount and 36 radius.