Rollin’ into the weekend
It doesn’t get much better than Friday. Pens hockey on tonight and Sunday, casual day at work, finally getting at least a one day break in the weather to spend some time shooting tomorrow, it’s going to be a good weekend. Going to be a bit of a post and run catch up day, as I am finishing up all the month end activities that I started on Monday at work today.
First off my shot from a few days ago which I took two weeks ago whilst roaming the South Side. Like I said before, that day just seemed to bring all the interesting people out of the woodwork, and I was more than happy to oblige by taking pictures of them. As I’m walking down East Carson Street, the road that runs right through the middle of the South Side, I came up to the Birmingham Bridge, which crosses the Monongahela River over to Fifth Avenue. Now this is a pretty busy intersection, as it is one of the main ways from getting from downtown Pittsburgh to the South Side, and this day was no different. Then, out of the blue (well, more like gray, it was pretty dreary out), I just see a head bobbing over the cars. I take another look and there is this guy on a scooter with pink handle bars and pink wheels. Now, this would have be strange to see if he was, say 12, but he was at least 25. He was singing to himself, looking around, completely oblivious that he was crossing the street in the middle of rush hour traffic with cars coming, who had to subsequently stop and wait for him.
The processing on this one was pretty light. Desaturated the entire image, then enhanced just the greens and reds with layers of curves. Added an over adjustment curve to boost the contrast as well as a Tonal Contrast layer. Finally added a warming filter to give a bit of a cinematic tone, put it in a pill box and then on display for you.
Today’s shot, which I will be posting a little later, is from a photowalk I went on with Brad Truxell before the holidays. It was such a frigid cold night, and this was one of the last shots I took before the blood in my fingers froze solid. This is a view down the parkway from just off the Clemente Bridge. On the right, you can see PNC Park and Heinz Field in the distance. What I didn’t realize I’d captured until I got home was the smoke coming out of the top of the building on the left, which I thought looked pretty cool.
I was going for a little bit different processing here, a bit more extreme than normal. Since the sky was such a deep blue, I was trying to get the tones on the road and the city to contrast it and I liked the way it turned out with almost a diagonal line of color separating the two. And of course you can’t go wrong with reflections. This is a 7 exposure HDR processed with HDR Efex under the “Clean” method. I had to do some heavy selective coloring adjustments to get the look I was going for. I also added a Pro Contrast filter in Color Efex.
Wishing you all a great weekend, see you on Monday.
Bridging the gap
As I sit here consuming my favorite morning caffeinated beverage (Coke Zero) I was thinking about the whole idea of blogging in general for a couple of reasons. First, I never thought that I would be blogging at all and now I am posting five entries a week. Kind of a big jump. Second, this started out as purely a photo blog, and if you look back at my first posts (actually, don’t look back at my first posts), you’ll see I posted a mini picture and about three lines of text. I started to get a little better, sharing sights of Pittsburgh and the Penguins, but those were few and far between. Like months between. But, I was still photo blogging. Then I had a sort of blogging epiphany and decided to post every weekday. My idea was to just post the picture on my flickr website (if you haven’t checked that out yet, head on over) and put the long description on here. But I know that only a small percentage of people will visit both, and I didn’t want to leave my flickr folks in the dark. So I kept posting medium length descriptions on there and full length write ups on here. But who wants to read about the same picture twice? Not sure I would, and they are my pictures. So I try to post something interesting (blizzards galore, Pittsburgh Penguins, random pontifications) to spice it up a bit. Which brings me to my third caffeine inspired thought. This is stuff is not easy to come up with. I know I’ve said it before a few weeks ago, but every day that I sit down and think about what I’d like to share with you, I have more and more respect for those of you out there who do some more of daily journalism (newspaper columnists, other bloggers, etc).
All that being said, I know that this has turned into a hybrid of Pittsburgh Penguin news and photography information. For right now, I’m okay with that, as the Pens have had some big news this year, and as the playoffs get closer, it will probably get even more exciting. I will write about other stuff that seems relevant/pops into my head, but with so much going on for the Pens it’s difficult to not write about them.
And they had more big news yesterday. Alexei Kovalev, who spent parts of five seasons with the Pens, will be back in the black and gold on Friday, as he was traded to Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon for a 7th round pick (6th round if the Pens win the first round of the playoffs and Kovy plays half of the games). He was a fan favorite when he was last here almost a decade ago, and I’m sure he will be again. Will he be able to bridge the gap in the Pens offensive woes as of late and be a key to the Pens’ success over the next few months? I think that if he has a great last third of the season, that the Pens will do. With the acquisition of James Neal and Mat Niskanen, we really beefed up the offense heading into the home stretch. If Sidney Crosby, out since January 5th with a concussion, can make it back into the lineup, then there is no doubt in my mind that we will be playing for Lord Stanley’s Cup once again in May.
Since the primary purpose of this blog is photography, how about we take a look at a picture? Like I said yesterday, last Saturday I was up and about early, walking around downtown, trying to get the sunrise. Once I got the shot I wanted right as the sun came over the buildings, I shot a few different angles of it and decided to call it a day, err, I mean morning, and head back to the car. I trekked across the Clemente Bridge and halfway there, I came across a spot where the sun was just cutting through the buildings and lighting up the bridge. Pulled the camera back out of the backpack, set up the tripod, and fired away. It’s shots like this that make me want to get up and go shooting every morning.
I processed this one pretty similar to the last one. This is another seven exposure HDR that I processed with HDR Efex under the Clean HDR Method. Removed all the dust spots, masked in a bit of the buildings on the right, as they were a little dark for my liking. Didn’t have to do any work on the halos, because, although it looks like there is one, it is really just the light shining from behind them. I masked it the -1 exposure, but it looked exactly the same, so I took it out. Desaturated the whole shot then did a bit of enhancing of the yellows on the bridge. Added a Tonal Contrast filter in Color Efex and some High Pass sharpening at the end.
That wraps up another week at HDR Exposed. Pens play the Canes tonight, should be a good one. Hope you all enjoy your weekend, and I’ll catch you on the flip side.
HDR Exposed 