Dante's Inferno?

Dante's Inferno? Not really. It's actually a shot of the tunnel which runs between the A terminal and the B/C terminals at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The tunnel is quite interesting. It has moving sidewalks going in both directions. On each side of the tunnel there are a series of etched glass panels which are lit from behind. Colors shift from reds to greens to blues to purples. At the same time ambient music plays and the color changes to the mood and beat of the music.

Over Thanksgiving, I found myself with some time to kill at Metro airport while I was between flights. I walked down to the tunnel to take some shots. Unfortunately the tunnel is mostly dark and all I was able to do was take some hand held shots. I wanted to capture the movement of the people, but I wanted the fixtures in the tunnel to be sharp. I tried to keep steady but wasn't entirely successful. When I was processing the image I decided to experiment with different treatments. The image above was created with a couple simple changes in Photoshop.

The first change I did was to crop the image to eliminate the top and bottom and focus on the center of the tunnel. I took this shot with an Olympus E-500 which has a 4/3 aspect ratio and the crop makes the image more panoramic. I then did some minor exposure adjustments in raw and then opened opened the image in Photoshop. From there, I duplicated the layer and selected the Linear Light layer blending mode. This created a more intense and more abstract image. I then added a Hue/Saturation layer and shifted the color from green to red. This created a darker, more ominous looking shot. Some minor curves adjustments and the image was completed. I like the way the light panels and the reflections on the floor look like fire emanating from the end of the tunnel. Since travel can be Hell sometimes, I thought the treatment was appropriate.