I went up to an abandoned hotel in Bouley Bay, where I took photos of the exterior as I walked around, finding an open entrance that brought me up and around to a deck that sat above the second floor, where there was another entryway for me to go inside. I explored most of the building, including the basement, and several rooms that were either mostly furnished, or full of waste and knee-deep in random litter, shooting photographs as I went.
I ended up with a collection of images ready to edit, making sure to weed out the compositions I didn’t like, anything unfocused, or anything that felt too uninteresting.
After playing with the basic adjustments, I did some colour grading on each image, experimenting with different combinations of tones and intensities to achieve a more dramatic, but not too fantastical overall image.
I intensified the primary colours too, adjusting both the hues and saturation to develop deeper, richer colours in each composition.
Using the tone curve tools, I again increased the output of each photograph to around 25 on the point curve, to create a more faded look on the image and lowering the contrast, which I feel makes it easier to have more freedom with my pieces to achieve a specific look.
To finish off each image, I used linear gradients to adjust exposures and other small basic adjustments to establish a stronger sense of lighting and shadow.
From this shoot, I was left with these 6 photographs as my best and final images. I was aiming for a softer colour palette in most of these, as I wanted to create a sense of nostalgia about the memories of the building and the people who spent time there.