I really needed a dull, overcast day for this shot of a bronze statue depicting the Father of the American Musical Comedy, George M. Cohan. Today was just such a day, and being Easter Sunday, finding a place to park just off Wickenden Street was easy. The overall scene, though, was too busy to do the statue justice, so I opted for a tight crop of the just the bronze bust, excluding the granite base and the brick patio beneath it.
Cohan was born on Wickenden Street in Providence, RI on – according to him, anyway – July 4, 1878. (His baptismal certificate says July 3rd, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as the 4th of July.) He was a member of The Four Cohans family act, and soon found his way to Broadway. He published over 300 songs, many of them Patriotic in number. I’m sure you’ve heard of a few of them: “You’re a Grand Old Flag”, “Give My Regards to Broadway,” “The Yankee Doodle Boy,” and the World War I hit, “Over There.” The songwriter died of cancer in 1942 and is buried in his family’s mausoleum at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.
I tried a number of different processing techniques before settling on what you see here. The blossoms in the background made for too busy a subject for a black and white to work, and doing it as a copper monochrome just seemed too hokey. Instead, I stuck to the true colors – a rarity for me – and used the crop to emphasize the bronze statue. I duplicated the background layer, converted it to a soft light blend mode, and then applied a high pass filter at 4 pixels. That served to sharpen the image. I adjusted the brightness and contrast slightly. (I usually avoid that because of the way it shifts the histogram, but in this case, it called for it.) A levels adjustment was used to clip both the high and low ends and to adjust the midtones, ever so slightly. I then used a saturation adjustment to lower the saturation a bit. Finally, a warming filter (81) was applied as the uppermost layer.
Great shot! Love the lighting and especially love the blossoms on the trees in the background. Oh, and also, I didn't know who he was, so thanks for the history to go with the statue!! I'll be whistling Give my regards to broadway for the rest of the day.
April 13th, 2012
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