What legends are made of
Yeah, I know, I know, I missed a post yesterday. We have been a bit busy at work lately, as we are moving to a new building, and we are currently the last ones in the old building, so there is a lot to get done. Back on the wagon today.
Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Elton John concert at the CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh. Now, I am a huge classic rock fan, and while I do enjoy Elton’s music, he wouldn’t be in my top 10 of favorite musicians, but let me say this: It was awesome. I mean, he really rocked the stage, it was incredible to watch him play, overall an immensely entertaining show. He kept the crowd engaged, standing up and acknowledging all four sides of the stage after every song and even took the time to sign autographs before his encore, probably about fifty or so people that he let come up and stand by the stage for his last few songs, which included Bennie and the Jets and Crocodile Rock, along with his encore of Your Song. Shots from this concert were taken with a Canon S95.
I did find the concert very enjoyable…except for the eight songs that he did with Leon Russell right in the middle of the show. I know that Russell is a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, but it just really seemed to detract from the energetic vibe of the rest of the show. The songs were slow, very few people knew them, as they were from the collaborative new album between Elton and Russell. Other than that, awesome show.
Back in August, on opening night of the CONSOL Energy Center, before any hockey game had been played, I was in attendance to see former Beatle Paul McCartney. In regards to entertainment, Sir Paul most definitely put on the best show I have ever been to. It also helped that I knew the majority of the songs played and could sing along (not that anyone would want to hear that), but being able to see a legend like McCartney, that is a once in a lifetime thing, at least at this point in his career. For this concert I had my Canon S90.
Finally, last March we attended an Eric Clapton concert at the old Civic Arena. I know that I just said McCartney put on the best show ever, but Clapton’s music was just mesmerizing. When they showed his hands making that guitar sing like it wasn’t anything at all was truly something special. Clapton is not the same kind of entertainer as Elton and Paul, but he put on one hell of a show and I would gladly go back to see him again. Didn’t have a great camera with my this time though, so just iPhone shots for this one.
I am very fortunate that I was able to see three of the great rock/pop musicians of our time in my hometown. I don’t go to many concerts, but when I do, I make it worthwhile.
Speaking of these Pittsburgh hockey arenas and to go along with the nighttime Pittsburgh skyline, here is a shot of both. I took this a few weeks into the season form the upper parking lot above the Civic Arena and had to hold up a lot of traffic to do so. People honking, yelling, screaming while I just threw up my hands and said, “It’s bracketing nine exposures at night, it takes a lot time, what do you want me to do?” One way to shut people up is just to confuse them!
Tomorrow’s Friday. Woo hoo.
Just another day in paradise
I try not to recap full Pens games, but I really have no choice today.
Whew. What a game. The Pens played the Detroit Red Wings last night at Joe Louis Arena in the Motor City and escaped with a 5-4, shootout win. They chose to make it as interesting as they possibly could though, having been staked to a 4-0 lead through almost two full periods with two goals from Pascal Dupuis (one a sneaky bag hander and one off of a gratuitous bounce off the boards), a nifty backhand by Tyler Kennedy over sprawling netminder Jimmy Howard and one off a sweet deke by Chris Kunitz.
The run ended with about two minutes to go in the second, when Henrik Zetterberg banked one off Kris Letang’s skate past Pittsburgh goalie Brent Johnson. Next thing you know the Red Wings are getting powerplay goals from Niklas Kronwall and ageless wonder Mike Modano, and one more from Valtteri Filppula, who shuffled one between the pads of Johnson that Johnson ended up kicking in his own net.
The Pens got some momentum back though, carrying it into overtime where they had chance after chance against Howard’s replacement Joey MacDonald. Into the shootout it went. Both goalies were brick walls until Penguin newcomer James Neal blistered a wristshot over the glove of MacDonald. Lights out, game over, the Pens earn a precious two points in the standings.
No, the shot above is not from that game, it is from a playoff game in 2008 between these two rivals, the same 2008 playoffs that saw the Red Wings hoist the Stanley Cup in the Igloo. Neither of the players depicted even played last night, as they are both out due to injuries. Sidney Crosby obviously has been dealing with a concussion since early January and Chris Osgood, the Red Wings goalie has been out for about a week with a sore groin. Although it’s not from the game, it is one of my favorite hockey shots that I have been lucky enough to get.
Today I’ll be wrapping up the Jamaican honeymoon shots. I’ve enjoyed doing this series on my blog over the last week and a half, as it has sort of allowed me to relive being there. I had not gone through all my shots from there in a few months, and it was nice to put myself there again.
Sunset was just an incredible time of day there, more so that in a lot of places. It was almost as if you waited with anticipation to see what kind of colors were going to appear, what the clouds were going to look like. These are two of my favorite shots I got right around dusk. One was taken with my S90, a bracket of three exposures, and the other with my D40X, an eleven exposure HDR. Both were processed in Photomatix, with some slight masking of the sky to get rid of some noise and colors.
I hope that you have enjoyed the Jamaican series. I’ll figure out another series to do next.
Thanks for stopping by.
World of color
These last few weeks have been some of the most miserable weather I can remember for a while. I didn’t really want to start off two straight days mentioning the weather, but today is just awful. It’s that wet, slushy snow mixed with rain. Just awful. So today’s shot will try to brighten up outside. First, more from Jamaica.
So yesterday I started with a post of a panorama of Couples Sans Souci that I took with the Canon S90 from about a hundred feet out in the water. Today I’ll give you a shot of the same part of the resort, except looking down from above. That way, you can really get a sense of the resort and how beautiful it was, albeit a bit small. But that’s ok. We really enjoyed the fact that you could see both ends of the beaches and it didn’t just run from resort to resort, where even if your resort did not have any kids, there were big families at the next resort over who were more concerned with getting their next margarita than controlling their children.
This was our first time staying at a couple’s only resort and until we have children of our own, I think that this is the way to go. I mentioned yesterday that the average age was definitely older than us, however we were still able to find people our age that we spent some time hanging out with during our week there. The full capacity of the resort is just over 300 guests, but I would say that there were about half that there in early August of last year. This made it even more enjoyable, as you weren’t packed at the bar waiting for a drink, or waiting forever at a table for dinner, or waiting for anything at all for that matter.
The only time we actually left the resort was to spend a few hours shopping on one rainy afternoon and the day we spent at Dunn’s River Falls, climbing through the waterfall. For the most part, we just moved from a chair on the beach to a raft in the water, back to the chair, back to the raft. They even had a little grille bar on the beach, so we didn’t even have to leave for lunch time, we just grabbed some jerk chicken or pizza at the bar and headed back down to our chairs. And what a view we had.
Today’s shot is a far cry from Jamaica in terms of surroundings and weather, but it’s still colorful in its own way. This is a view from the top of Allegheny Cemetery one a photowalk that I went on last fall with Mike Criswell, a.k.a. Theaterwiz. Wiz and the Empress came down from Ohio to do some shooting in downtown Oakland, have some lunch at Hofbrauhaus and then head on over the Allegheny Cemetery. Even though I live less than twenty minutes from there, I had never been there before, so I was anxious to go shooting. It was a beautiful fall day, a perfect day to capture the sights from a historic place like that. You can actually see Wiz on the right hand side of this shot.
Now for the processing. This is a nine exposure HDR processed in HDR Efex under the “Dark Soft” method. I added a control point in the sky, as it made the clouds darker than I liked. Kicked it over to Photoshop where I added a level adjustment to the blues to enhance the little bit of sky peeking through and an overall saturation layer to enhance all the colors. Adjusted the shadows to recover them just a pinch. I masked it some of the clouds as well, because a few of them were a little blown out. Added a Tonal Contrast filter in Color and some High Pass sharpening and call it a day.
That’s all for today. More to come tomorrow.
Oh yeah, Pens won last night against the Sabres. First regulation win since February 4th. Against the Sabres.
Getting warmer
Ok, ok, so I know that it isn’t getting that much warmer around here, but we are supposed to have three straight days of 50+ degree weather, which is pretty excited. Granted, there is the western Pennsylvania spring rain that will come along with it, but I’ll take what I can get.
Since we are about to have a bit of a warm spell, I thought that I would warm up HDR Exposed with a shot from Jamaica, another panorama. I won’t be posting this one to flickr (at least not right now), but I still think it is a pretty cool shot.
Like I’ve mentioned a few times before, we stayed at the Couples Sans Souci in Ocho Rios Jamaica and could not have been happier with our choice. The last couple tropical vacations we took to Punta Cana and Cancun, we certainly more of a party atmosphere. After planning a wedding for almost two years, especially dealing with the last couple months before the wedding, we were just looking for someone nice and quiet to relax and take some time off. That’s exactly what we found at Couples Sans Souci. Sure there was some partying at night, but with no kids running around and the average age of the other people at the resort a good ten years older than us, we found a nice mix of fun, sun and relaxation.
I’ll be posting a few shots from our trip everyday this week to try to encourage the warm weather to get here faster. Who knows, maybe it will work. As for the processing on the panorama, it is a twelve shot pano/vertorama, with six shots for the top and six for the bottom. Photoshop CS5 did a great job of blending the sky, so I just had to do some minor shadow adjustment. This is the view of the entire resort, so you can see how small and secluded it is. It doesn’t share beaches with other resorts, so you didn’t get the peddlers or random people walking through what you were trying to lay on the beach. Very nice.
Today’s “official” upload is a far cry from the beaches in Jamaica. This is the Portal Bridge, a pedestrian bridge that is near the Point in downtown Pittsburgh. I took this the day I took most of my previous uploads, on that Saturday morning that was cold and windy. I’ve been wanting to capture this bridge for a while, but all of the construction that they’ve been doing around the Point has made it a bit difficult, and I even had to move some signage and construction barrels out of the way for this shot. It was built in 1961 and connects the tip of downtown Pittsburgh to Point State Park.
On to the processing. This is a seven exposure HDR processed with HDR Efex under the “Clean” Method. The lighting was a bit tricky to handle, as, like I’ve said before, the D700 gets a little confused sometimes with white balance from different light sources. I had to tone down the warm lights coming from the side of the bridge and added an overall desaturation layer. Applied a Tonal Contrast filter, added some definition in iPhoto and shipped it off to the blog.
Thanks for your visits everyone, they are much appreciated.