This image is a composite of two images taken on my recent photo walk to Alcatraz with my good friend Doug Kaye.
Here are the two images used to create this one:
The guard tower was shot on a beautifully clear (and boring sky!) day – and a bit of The Rock itself captured up close – both images were taken using my tiny Canon PowerShot S95.
These two images were blended in Photoshop using a combination of Luminosity and Soft Light blend modes along with Nik’s Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro 3 and Silver Efex Pro 2 filters. I first converted the guard tower image to black and white – the blue sky was just too overwhelming and taking it to black and white neutralized it. Similarly with the the rock texture. At the very end, I dropped a little bit of light into the spot light on the tower using Viveza 2 – trying to create a small point of interest. Finally imported the resulting JPEG back into Lightroom 3 and applied a vignette.
If you’re ready to make a movie about Alcatraz, this just might be the movie poster shot!