Stairs, Cooling Tower

@Amir: Thank you. What you perceive as a lack of detail may be a difference in monitor calibration. My monitor is calibrated with the Spyder2 Pro. You should actually see very little pure black (none, technically, as I set the black point to a value of around 2 to 4) --and most of that is in the sky in the upper right part of the image, with some near black in the ground area in the bottom left foreground. In the darkest part of the image on the left side you should be able to see detail --like the corrugations in the metal and the support pieces for those corrugated "wings" near the bottom of the cooling tower-- all the way to the left edge of the photo.

@JoeB: Thanks. In fact, I placed this shot in the "Noir" theme at JPG Magazine but it hasn't gotten much traction.

@Daroru: My explanation was perhaps a little confusing. I didn't take a tripod shot here so there is nothing to compare with. Given the way I found myself having to position my camera around various foreground objects I abandoned the tripod idea from the outset. When I came back and used the tripod a couple nights later I was shooting the whole plant from a different vantage point. I do wish, though, that I had a tripod shot at ISO 100: that might have produced a very interesting image. I'll have to go back again when it's cold enough to reproduce this effect of condensation around the cooling tower and shoot from the tripod. BTW, I put this shot in the "Noir" theme at JPG Magazine, but it hasn't gotten much traction.