Lucky 13
Well, you know I have to do it. Ok, so maybe you don’t know what “it” is, especially if you aren’t a hockey fan. But if you have been following my blog you know I’m kinda sorta a big Pens fan, and you would also know that they are in the first round of the playoffs right now. And last night’s game…well…it was awesome. And while you can read recaps on about 50 different websites, I still can’t help but at least tell you how exciting it was.
This game had just about everything that makes hockey exciting (aside from Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, still out with injuries). The Pens went up 2-0 in the first 1+ period of the game on goals by Tyler Kennedy (pictured above in warm ups earlier this season) and Arron Asham, who is having an incredible post season. TK’s goal was huge because it snapped the 0-Forever powerplay drought the Pens were on. Early in the second Asham tallied his to double the lead. But again, the Lightning fought back. Martin St. Louis took a beautiful area pass, scorched past Ben Lovejoy and buried it to the far side past Fleury. I’m not a fan of St. Louis at all, but damn that was one hell of a goal.
Pittsburgh made it out of the second up 2-1 and looked like they were on their way to a victory by the same score until Sean Bergenheim found the puck in a scrum in front of the Flower and shoveled it home, knotting the score at 2 with just 3 minutes left in regulation. The first overtime came and went, but not before we had some more excitement. Craig Adams was called on a terrible interference penalty (one of many terrible calls by the referees in this series) that put the Lightning again on the man advantage. But then Pens held strong killing off all 4 Lightning powerplays last night. Max Talbot, Tyler Kennedy and Craig Adams all had odd man chances to score but couldn’t put it behind Dwayne Roloson. The defensive play of the night, however, was Paul Martin’ play on Lightning superstar Steve Stamkos. Stamkos took a pass up the middle and had a breakaway, but Martin smoothly came up behind him, lifted his stick and poked the puck away. Crisis averted.
NHL playoff overtimes are the full 20 minutes, with no shootout and a full intermission in between. There are also no TV timeouts, so the players can get very tired very quick. This is a factor, since this game went into the second overtime. The Pens owned the puck for most of the fifth total period played, and it led to the play of the night. Jordan Staal won the offensive zone faceoff and James Neal (second and third pictures above) got a shot on net, which was turned aside by Roloson. The puck was swept around the end boards, and Kris Letang made a nice play to keep it in. Staal corralled it with his stick and through it behind him against the boards, where it was picked up by Neal who just tossed it on net. At the same time that announcer Bob Errey was saying “He just needs one” (referring to the fact that Neal hadn’t scored in 21 games) the puck zipped over Roloson’s shoulder for the game winning goal. 3-2 win and a 3-1 series lead as Game 5 rolls back to the ‘ Burgh on Saturday.
So why Lucky 13? Since there are no first round byes in hockey, a team needs 16 wins to capture the Stanley Cup. The Pens have won 3, so just 13 more.
I’m feeling lucky.
Unbeatable
And that is what Marc Andre Fleury looked like in last night’s playoff opener. It was possibly the best performance I have ever seen out of a goalie since I can remember, he was that good. Didn’t matter who was shooting from where, the Flower was making kick saves, glove saves, blocker saves, pad saves. I mean, it was just unbelievable to see. Obliviously the Pens won, 3-0, as Fleury earned his fifth career playoff shutout.
This was a really important game, more so that a normal Game 1 of the first rounds of the playoffs. With no Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin in the lineup, it was vital that the Pens were able to establish their game early and often against the high powered Lightning offense. Pittsburgh came out hitting, with Steven Stamkos, Ryan Malone and Vincent Levacalier getting the worst of it, especially Stamkos, who got absolutely destroyed by Brooks Orpik. The best part about watching that hit was the fact that everyone saw it coming. Everyone except Stamkos that is.
As solid as any goaltender is, a team still needs to score goals. Even though the Pens were peppering the Tampa Bay goalie Dwayne Roloson with nearly 30 shots through two periods, they still weren’t able to put one in the back of the net. Then, about six minutes into the third period, Alexei Kovalev (pictured above from a game last week) changed all that. After he appeared to be tripped (with no penalty), he layed on the ice for just a second. When the defenseman drifted away, Kovy jumped up, took a shot-pass from James Neal, and buried it in the back of the net.
Just 18 seconds later, Pens fourth liner Arron Asham (above, from last night’s game) streaked down the right side of the ice, faked a shot to draw Roloson away from the net, wrapped around the net and tried to bury one. It bounced off a stick, came right back to him, and he buried it in the open net. We were still going crazy from the Kovy goal, that half the arena didn’t even realize we’d scored again. Asham is one of those roll players I talked about yesterday who, if the Pens are going to win the Cup, needs to step up, and he did just that. Chris Kunitz added an empty netter to seal the game.
Overall the Pens looked great. Hard hitting, great penalty killing, beating the trap that the Lightning play is what led to the Game 1 victory. The important thing is sticking to their game for the rest of the playoffs.
Game 2 is tomorrow. And it can’t come soon enough.
Eyes on the prize
Well it all begins tonight. The 2011 Stanley Cup playoffs will open with the Pittsburgh Penguins taking on the Tampa Bay Lightning at the CONSOL Energy Center. It certainly has been a trying year for these Pens, but they have shown that they have what it takes to win under extreme adversity. They have only had the combined services of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal for two games this season, with Staal missing the first half due to a broken hand/severed tendon in his foot and Sid and Geno missing more or less the entire second half of the season. Yet these Pens have fought through rough stretches of poor powerplay performance, low goal totals and a host of other injuries to finish fourth in the conference and gain home ice advantage through at least the first round of the playoffs.
So what is it going to take to win? The same things that they have been doing all year. Solid penalty kill. Team defense. Brick wall goaltending. And of course production from their role players, like Craig Adams, Max Talbot, Mike Rupp and others. I like the Pens in this series in five games because of all these factors, but one thing I think that really sets up apart from the Lightning is our consistency. We never really let the season get away from us, even with the loss our two biggest superstars. Yes, we did lose five or six games in a row after Sid was out, but that can be expected when you lose the main focus of your offense.
The Pens are also very versatile while I believe that Lightning are much more one dimensional. They want to get the puck to Stamkos, St. Louis or Lecavalier and let them shoot. They rely too heavily on the powerplay and if they aren’t getting the opportunities, then they won’t be effective. The Pens have scorers on every line and guys that bring a high level of energy to team like Talbot, pictured above. I took this during a game back in February, and it’s always fun to photograph Talbot, as he seems to always be looking into the camera. He’s a guy who can win you the faceoff, kill a penalty, and then find himself alone in the middle of the ice for a breakaway. Max went through a bit of a dry spell early in the year, but the intangibles he brings to the team in the absence of their captain is immeasurable.
Today’s shot is one I took at the last game I was at which was the last regular season home game. We were in a suite above the single attack zone, which is a great view to watch the game from. I took this HDR during the national anthem, as you can see by the stars and stripes on the ice. This is a five exposure JPEG HDR that I processed with HDR Efex under the “Clean” method. Since the players and scoreboard were both moving, I took the +2 exposure (for the players) and the -2 exposure (for the scoreboard), tonemapped both of those under the Clean method and masked in the respective shots of the picture to give it a crisp look. I also added a Pro Contrast filter in HDR Efex to give the shot a bit more pop. As a note, that is also Max Talbot on the video screen here as well.
At the time I am finishing this, 11 hours and 39 minutes until puck drop.
LET’S GO PENS.
Focused
What a great way to close out the regular season at home last night at CONSOL Energy Center for the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Pens put up four goals on former Penguin netminder and current New Jersey backup goalie Johan “The Moose” Hedberg to move one step closer to clinching home ice for the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The start of the game was a little shaky, as the Pens were trying to break the 1-3-1 trap that the Devils play, but once they got in the groove, they owned the ice, picking up goals Jordan Staal, Chris Kunitz on a great feed by Tyler Kennedy and two from Pascal Dupuis, one being an empty netter with time expiring in the game during a Devils powerplay.
There is something magical about playoff sports, well at least for playoff hockey. I’ve never been to a Pittsburgh Pirates playoff game and only one Pittsburgh Steelers playoff game when I was younger, so playoff hockey is really the only playoff action I know. Don’t get me wrong, the regular is awesome, especially against rivals like the Flyers and Capitals. But everyone just seems to cheer a little bit louder, the players skate harder, and there is just a buzz that resonates throughout the entire building.
Players saluting the fans after the game
Very few times will you see someone sitting back in their seat, casually watching the action. No, everyone is hanging on the edge, just waiting for that big goal to be scored by a superstar like Sidney Crosby or Jordan Staal, a talented young star like Mark Letestu or Chris Conner, or a grinding role player who is ever so important to the team like Craig Adams (pictured in the first shot above) or Max Talbot. Playoff hockey is about watching Marc Andre Fleury make an unbelievable save to bail out a defenseman and keep the game close or seeing Brooks Orpik or Deryk Engelland flatten someone into the boards so hard you need a spatula to get them off. I can’t wait.
Today’s shot keeps with the theme of the post as it is the exterior of CONSOL Energy Center. While the new home of the Pens doesn’t quite have the character of the old Civic Arena, it still as its own mystique, especially early in the morning with the sun rising. I took this one a few months back during an early morning photowalk around downtown Pittsburgh. This is the lower gate of the arena, the American Eagle Gate, located on 5th Avenue. I thought that it was so cool how you can see reflections on the left side of the glass on the building, but in the front you can actually see right through into the stairwell that ascends to the seating level.
This is a nine exposure HDR processed in HDR Efex under the “Clean” HDR method. After fixing some of the dust spot, I masked in the entire blue sky, because I wanted it to be rich and contrast nicely with the warm look of the building. I also added blue and red layer curve adjustments to bring out some contrast in the sky and building, and a slight selective coloring layer to enhance the sun. Finally I added a Tonal Contrast filter in Color Efex and sent it off the blog.
Thanks to everyone who stops by, see y’all tomorrow.
New horizons
First off I just wanted to thank everyone who gave their input on flickr and Explore in my post yesterday. I really enjoyed the feedback and hearing some different views on it.
Yesterday’s post was a bit long in verbiage so today I’ll give you a break and make it a bit longer but in pictures. Every so often I like to put up a whole series of action shots that I took before the Pens games and today is just one of those days. Originally I was thinking about doing this for today’s post because I thought that we would have pulled out a great win last night against our hated in state rivals, the Philadelphia Flyers and pull even with them for the division lead. The Pens were looking great to, all over the ice, help two one goal leads, but the Flyers proved the luckier of the two teams last night, with pucks bouncing over, around and under Marc Andre Fleury for a 5-2 win by the men in orange.
So where does that leave the Pens? Probably in fourth place at the end of the season, which means that we will have guaranteed home ice advantage, at least for the first round and that our like opponent will be Steven Stamkos and the Tampa Bay Lightning. I like this matchup for Pittsburgh, as the Pens are a much deeper team than the lighting with a lot more playoff experience. However, anything can happen at any time in the playoffs.
On to the shots. The first one above is Mike Rupp, and I thought that this one was appropriate to start off with as it was one of the first pictures I took from last Friday’s game. All the images you see here today are from that contest between the New Jersey Devils and the Pens, which the Pens won in a 1-0 thrilling shootout victory. I was able to capture this one right as Rupp skated on the ice, and I was lucky enough to get the spot light right on top of him, which has never happened before.
Next up is winger James Neal, one of the players taking the Pens to the new horizon. He came over from the Dallas Stars along with Matt Niskanen back at the trade deadline for Alex Goligoski. Neal is a hardnosed, physical player who has a lethal wrist shot. He’s got speed and puck handling ability and was a very valuable add to the roster this year.
Above is Ben Lovejoy, a right handed shooting defenseman who has certainly made his mark in the NHL this year. Lovejoy is a shutdown d-man who has a decent shot too, and always willing to jump into the offensive play. I’m posting this more for the funny expression on his face than anything else.
Here we have Mike Comrie, another new Penguin this year. He was signed as a free agent, and although he has missed most of this season due to hip surgery, has put up 30 goal seasons in his past. I happened to catch him right as he was spitting in warm ups, which made for an interesting shot.
Taking a shot during warm ups is winger Pascal Dupuis. Dupuis is a high energy player, very quick, always flying around the ice. He gets a minute here or there on the penalty kill, but strength other than his speed is his killer slap shot. He may not be able to maneuver around you, but he can definitely rip it past you.
Last but certainly not least is a name that is near and dear to many people in Pittsburgh and that is Alexei Kovalev (right in the above shot), or Kovy. Kovy is on his second tour with the Pens, reacquired at the trade deadline this year for a conditional 6th round pick from the Ottawa Senators. Though he has only put up two goals (and two more in the shootout), Kovalev can still wheel and deal the puck with the best of them. The game is certainly faster than the last time he played for Pittsburgh and was in his prime, but it’s still so much fun to watch him play. He showed off some of that stick handling ability in the bottom shot here, where he bounced the puck on his stick from the red goal line all the way to center ice. Just awesome.
Today’s shot is a view from our new office building that my company moved into on Monday. We have a great view of the sunrise, which is much better than the view we had before, which was none, as we were smack in the middle of our last building with no windows at all. I know you can see the reflections of the lights in the window, but I just wasn’t able to clone them out. If you look directly to the right on the bottom part of the reflection, you can see the moon as well.
This was a seven exposure HDR processed with HDR Efex under the “Natural” setting. No masking in this one, just adjusted overall curves and then added a green curves adjusted layer to enhance the grass. Cloned out a few dust spots, increased overall saturation and finally added a Tonal Contrast filter to everything but the sky.
Well, that ended up being longer than yesterday. I’ll try to keep it shorter tomorrow.
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.
Igloo overload
Monday morning: back to work, back to blogging, and only three more days until the iPad 2 is at my door. Cannot wait.
Today, as the title suggests, is going to be a bit of an Igloo overload. For those of you who are from Pittsburgh or may have read one of my previous posts, the Igloo is the nickname that was given to the old home of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Civic Arena. This is an appropriate name because, well, it looks like an Igloo. Even more appropriate that the team who (whom? nah, who) it was built for are the Penguins.
What inspired this Civic Arena kick? Not too sure. Just been going through a lot of my old shots lately, and I came across a whole series that I did last year. The Penguins had an employee skating party to celebrate the end of the season and the closing of the iconic building, and since my wife falls into that category I got to attend. I knew it was going to be my last chance to take pictures of the inside of the Arena, so I snapped as many as I could before we left. With the hockey playoffs fast approaching, I have been reminiscing about the Civic Arena, and will be posting the pictures both on my blog (that’s here) and flickr.
The last post that I did specifically about the Civic Arena focused on pictures of the outside, while today, you’ll get a tour of the inside. We’ll start out with the entrance to and view from our seats for almost every game. Located in C3, the single attack side (meaning the Pens only shot towards us once), they had a great view of the entire ice. You could see plays develop, pick up on opportunities, and the play was never really blocked or shielded in any way.
Another place that had a great view was from the club seats or the press area, way at the top of the building. This is something that made the Igloo so unique, the domed roof made the whole place seem twice as big as it really was. Watching a game from that high up was something special, because although you could barely read the players’ names on the back of the jerseys, you could hear everything they were saying, and it really gave you a different perspective on the game.
Then of course there was the ice level, where I was lucky enough to have my camera and tripod to get these shots. The first one above is from one of the goal creases, and this too gives a sense for the vastness that was the inside. The second one above was taken from one of the penalty boxes looking towards both benches. You can see Penguin employees milling around, enjoy the last few hours of public access.
Of course I had to get a picture (after waiting in line) of the locker room. Well, not actually the locker room, but the door to get in to the locker room. In the new CONSOL Energy Center, like most of the arenas around the league, the entrance to and from the locker room is behind the bench area, which is more convenient for intermissions and to handle injuries. The Civic Arena had a separate entrance however, off to the corner of the ice.
To wrap it up, how about a few new pictures of the outside? This is the sign located at Gate 3 at the bottom of the Arena, welcoming fans entering from the city. If you walked up the side of the arena, you would see Gate 2, where staff and players entered, and finally Gate 3, one of the more popular gates, as it gave easy access to fans coming from above the arena as well as 5th Avenue.
That’s it for the tour of the Igloo today. Let’s hope this walk down memory lane will bring them some luck against the Red Wings tonight.
From Schenley Casino to Forbes Field to CONSOL Energy – A Tale of Pittsburgh’s Sports Arenas
I thought that it would only be fitting that I post a picture of the two hockey arenas in Pittsburgh since I posted the football and baseball stadiums the last couple days. The city of Pittsburgh truly has been blessed with some incredible sports venues, and both of these are no exception. I did a write up on Mellon Arena, the old home of the Penguins a view months back, when I was blogging every month and a half or so. I wanted to take some time and talk about the sporting arena in general, especially those in Pittsburgh.
Now, we haven’t always had the good fortune of having three of the best venues to watch professional sports in the country. It all started back in 1895 with the Schenley Park Casino, which was Pittsburgh’s first multi use arena, and the first arena in the country to have an artificial ice surface. It was destroyed in 1896 by a gas explosion. That was succeeded by the Duquesne Gardens, which played host to a variety of sports teams, but mainly the Pittsburgh Pirates (who became known later as the Penguins…totally different from the baseball team, as the baseball Pirates have been around since the late 1800’s). Duquesne Gardens was the first arena to actually have glass above the dasher boards, developed by (you guessed it) Pittsburgh Plate Glass (ok, so maybe if you weren’t from Pittsburgh you didn’t guess it). It stayed open from 1899 until 1956, when it was destroyed as the city was beginning construction on the new Civic Arena (more on this in a bit). But that was strictly for basketball and hockey. The Pirates (baseball) needed a home too. They first played at Exposition Park, which was located not too far from the current location of PNC Park along Pittsburgh’s North Shore. They played their home games there for almost 20 years, from 1890 until 1909, when they moved to the famous Forbes Field. Here they would share the stadium with the Pittsburgh Steelers and University of Pittsburgh Panthers until 1970.
However parts of the field still remain around Pittsburgh today. You can see the left field wall over which Bill Mazeroski hit his legendary home run to beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, as well as a statue of Maz outside of PNC Park (pictured above). You can also find the home plate from Forbes Field in Posvar Hall at the University of Pittsburgh’s campus, very near its exact location in the park, and the outline of the outfield wall still remains. Two separate fires sadly forced the demolition of this historic venue in 1971, being replaced by Three Rivers Stadium.
PNC Park
Three Rivers, aptly named for being where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio near the Point in Pittsburgh, played home for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers for three decades. It was built in the era of “cookie cutter” stadiums, very drab on the outside, and not much better on the interior. In fact, for baseball games, they had to tarp off sections of the seats directly behind center field, as it would interfere with the batters’ ability to pick up the ball from the hand of the pitcher (newer stadiums simply do not have seats there, including PNC Park). The park could be reconfigured to suit both football and baseball, but by the early 1990s, talks had begun to get the Pirates their own stadium and remodel the existing Three Rivers to be strictly a football venue. In July 1999, over $800 million worth of funding was approved for both Heinz Field (pictured above) and PNC Park (pictured below), and ground was broken to begin construction in 1999, with both teams enjoying their new homes for the 2001 seasons. I’ve only ever seen one game in Heinz Field (and it was a hockey game, the Winter Classic), but it is one of the most unique football stadiums in the country, with the open end giving spectators a view of the city of Pittsburgh and the Point. PNC Park is consistently voted the most beautiful baseball park in the country, again having one whole side of the park open and being able to see the entire city skyline.
Heinz Field
As for the Civic Arena (pictured below), home of the Pittsburgh Penguins from 1966 until 2010, I won’t go into a lot of details since I’ve written about it before. Feel free to check out that post. I will mention that it was the first domed sporting venue that had a retractable roof, though it has not been functional for over a decade. One interesting fact is that when it opened it contained only 12,508, just eight seats over the minimum NHL requirement for capacity.
Civic Arena
In August of 2010, the CONSOL Energy, pictured above, opened and it makes the Civic Arena look like something from ancient Rome. Don’t get me wrong, I love the “Igloo” as the Civic Arena was nicknamed, there is something about old sporting venues that you just have to appreciate. But CONSOL is the new model that arenas will be built around in the future.
I took the last shot, which is today’s upload, on my photowalk last Saturday morning. I did the best I could to include all both the Civic Arena and CONSOL in the photo, but this is literally as far back as I could stand, as there was a fence and a steep fill behind me. This is a side of the building that I’ve captured before, though you weren’t able to see the Igloo in the background. For the processing, this is a seven exposure HDR processed in HDR Efex under the Clean HDR Method. Masked in the entire sky as well as the flags, as it was really windy on this particular morning and I had crazy ghosting effects. Overall desaturation and then added a blue curves layer for the sky, as well as a Tonal Contrast Filter from Color Efex, then finished it off the with a High Pass Sharpening filter.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little walk down Pittsburgh sports arena memory lane. Catch you tomorrow.
In different directions
There’s something about Monday morning that just feels so wrong, especially on days when there is a torrential rain/thunderstorm going on outside. Especially after a weekend where it was starting to warm up, got a chance to relax, the sun was out. Ugh. That’s all I can say about that.
Today I’m going to fall into the category of typical photoblog as I have some catching up to do in regards to pictures that I’ve posted on my flickr photostream. Since I like to walk through how I do my processing, and with three pictures that I spent a decent about of time on, I want to make sure that I cover everything. In conjunction with that thought, I will be putting together a Photoshop Effects Tutorial Page where I go through some of the most common processes that I do, like High Pass Sharpening, the Orton Effect, to name a few. Yes, some of them are pretty simple, but when I was first figuring out what the heck I was doing when it came to Photoshop, I always had a ton of browser windows open because no one website seemed to have them. I’m not saying that mine will either, however, it will give you a place to go to if I say I used a certain effect in my processing, you can jump to that page and see how it was done. I’m hoping to have it up by next week.
So on to some shots. No not that kind. Although Monday morning probably would be a good time to start taking some. Might make the day go by a bit quicker. The first one is something that I don’t normally do, one that I’ve posted only seven of them as the subject in the 1,040+ of the pictures I have on flickr. Flowers. Yep. I don’t mean multiple Marc Andre Fleurys (he’s called the Flower because of Fleury, fleur-de-lis, ok, ok, you got it). I got Dana a bouquet of flowers for her birthday a few weeks ago (lucky for me she doesn’t like red roses) so I thought I would see if I could have some fun with them.
Through on the 50 mm 1.4 and shot away. No HDRs, just a single exposure. First I cropped the image, as there was a chair in the bottom right hand corner. Put it in Color Effex and added a Glamour Glow Filter and then ran it through again and added a Pro Contrast filter. Even though the focus was on the center flower (nope, don’t ask, have NO idea what it is), and I did get some nice bokeh (we’ve talked about that already, out of focus part of the picture), I still added a vignette to bring out the center. At first I was a bit upset that I got the window (blue part) in the back of the frame, but that I unded up doing a curves level on the window to help bring out the blue even more. Increased the vibrance and the purples in the image, and I liked the way it turned out.
Image number two of the day is from the early Saturday morning photowalk I took last week. I haven’t really been too successful getting pictures of the moon in HDR, they always end up very blown out. Well, on this particular morning, the moon was huge in the sky, so I thought I would give it the old college try. First attempt (which I will post in the a few days because I still like the shot) was no good. Second attempt (which I won’t post), was worse. Finally, I decided to head over the Ft. Duquesne Bridge, as I wanted to get the sunrise from the North Shore. The moon was hanging in the valley between the two hills of Mt. Washington, with Heinz Field on the right, and I thought that I would go for one more. Seven exposures later and I got what I wanted.
Merged the images using HDR Efex, using the Clean HDR Method. I ended up masking in the entire sky from the -2 exposure, as I didn’t really like the colors that I was getting from the HDR, they weren’t what I remember seeing, and this was. I also took the -3 exposure and masked in just the mood, just to the point where you can see the darker parts that you can see with the naked eye. Added an overall saturation layer to the entire image, and then I had to go to work on the grass. Grass and winter really don’t mix, and the section below the stadium was pretty brown. I did a Color Select on the shades of grass, then did a Curves adjustment on the greens to bring them out to add some pop to the image. I also did a Color Select on the yellow seats of the stadium to bring them out a bit more. Added a Tonal Contrast in Color Efex and finally a High Pass Sharpening Filter and I was good to go.
Lastly, today’s shot. So after I took the previous shot, finished walking across the Ft. Duquesne Bridge, got a few shots right off the bridge, I made my way up past PNC Park, where I wanted to get the sunrise. They are currently doing construction on the Riverwalk, so I had to divert and actually walk past the stadium. The glow of the sun was just coming up in the corner by the home of Pirates, and the wide angle gave it almost a fish eye look. I set up shop right in front of JP “Honus” Wagner and snapped away.
Combined the seven exposures in HDR Efex with the Natural setting and then kicked it over to Photoshop. Once again, I wasn’t overly pleased with the sky, so I masked in the entire -2 exposure. I also had to mask in a little bit of the top of the stadium, mostly the steel beams on top, to bring back some of the detail. Again, I increased overall saturation, and also added an extra blue Curves layer for the rest of the sky. Applied a Tonal Contrast Filter in Color Efex and another High Pass Sharpening Filter and called it a day.
Well, I know that was more than I usually go through, especially on a Monday morning, but I wanted to make sure that I had everything covered. I also know that I made no reference to the title. I really did mean to. I was trying to play on the Steelers and Pirates stadiums, Pirates worst in the league for 18 seasons, Steelers made it to the Super Bowl again, etc., etc.. Also for the fact that I posted something other than a wide angle cityscape.
One more thing. Alexei Kovalev of the Pittsburgh Penguins? A goal in regulation and then the shootout winner on Saturday night. Welcome home Kovy.
See you all tomorrow.
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.
A flash of brilliance
I really can’t help but at least talk about the Pens for a little bit after a game. Although they lost again last night, which is getting to be a common theme with the rash of injuries they’ve had, there were some sparks in the lineup that certainly give you some optimism. Tyler Kennedy, on a bit of a tear as of late, scored two goals, and Marc Andre Fleury looked absolutely brilliant in the loss. The goals, a one timer from behind the net on a power play, a bad bounce that game right to a Shark who jammed it home, and a scrum in front of the net with Fleury down, can be easily forgiven. The offense has to get going though, averaging only 2 goals a game since the departure of Sidney Crosby, last in league by a long shot. I’m not giving up on the season yet. Let’s go Pens.
Some shots from the game last night. The first one is a thirty image panorama that I took with the iPhone and stitched with AutoStitch. I think that it game out pretty cool. The second one is a tilt shift that I took with the S95, as that is a custom scene on the phone. Also not too shabby.
30 image panorama
Canon S95 Tilt Shift
Like I said a few days ago, I was finally able to get out shooting this weekend. Got up real early on Saturday at 6, grabbed the gear, and rolled out downtown. I had this vision of the sunrise coming up over the city and me standing at the Point, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio. However, I got downtown, which was eerily empty, seeing as it was 6:30 on a Saturday morning, and realized that that just wasn’t going to work. There are still doing construction at the Point, and it really detracted from the picture. Ok, on to Plan B. I headed over the Fort Duquesne Bridge towards Heinz Field, and the view down the river was stunning. The moon was huge in the sky, the colors were all kinds of shades of pastels and the water was nice and calm in the river. Got a few shots, then headed over my destination, right below the Clemente Bridge. Set up the tripod, snapped a few pre sunrise shots and waited. I saw the sun starting to come and thought, “It has to peak around the buildings soon.” I look behind me, and see it is already shining on the building that I was standing in front of. So I back up 10 feet, and lo and behold, there is the sun, streaming through the Rachel Carson Bridge. “Um yeah, I’ll take an order of sun flares, no thanks, no halos for me today.”
This is a seven exposure HDR processed under the Clean setting on HDR Efex. After cleaning up all the dust spots in the sky (yes I forget to clean the sensor before I went out. Come on, it was 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday. Gimme a break.) I could go to work. First, I selected the tree and recovered some of the shadows on it. I wanted it to be silhouetted, just not as much as it was. I added a green curves level to enhance the grass and the bushes, as well as did selective coloring to give the sun a more reddish tint, as it was a bit too yellow for my liking. Kicked it over the Color Efex where I added a Tonal Contrast layer on everything but the sky, and finally added some High Park Sharpening. I really like the result, one of my favorite shots that haven’t been from New York in a while.
That about wraps it up for today. One more day til Friday.
A bitter night
One of the great things about living in western Pennsylvania is that we have four very distinct seasons. Unlike a lot of the northern or southern states where it either states cold or warm for most of the year, we see a gradual transition from winter to spring to summer to fall. We get to experience a white Christmas, flowers blooming, barbeques and fireworks and beautiful fall foliage that is painted throughout the region. However, one of the worst things about living in western Pennsylvania is that we have four very distinct seasons. Summer and fall I’m more or less okay with, it’s just the end of winter/beginning of spring that really get me. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow as much as the next guy, but when it dumps eight inches during rush hour on a Monday night in late February, that I can do without. It’s not so much all the snow we got, but the fact that yesterday morning it started out as a torrential downpour of rain. Then, eleven hours later, we have a little blizzard that locks up most of the city.
There is something eerily calm about the snow. I spent the better part of two hours last night unburying both my driveway and a few of my neighbors and when the wind died down it was a very serene mood. The street lamps were glowing warm light that was being diffused by the falling snow, there wasn’t anyone on the road and it was just quiet. You could not tell where one person’s yard ended and another began. You couldn’t even tell where the yard ended and the street began. A plow truck hadn’t been through in over an hour, so the road was completely covered again. I found myself just standing there, with ice forwards on my hair and gloves, taking it all in. And for as much as I do not really like to spent until midnight shoveling and being freezing cold, it was oddly peaceful.
Some shots from the storm, all taken with the S95.
View down my street
Before shoveling
Front walkway
Shoveled path in HDR
Now to completely switch gears. Yesterday’s post was all about the Winter Classic and the matchup between the Penguins and the Capitals. Well, the Pens lost (title reference #2), in a hard fought, 1-0 game. I can’t be too upset, as the goalie for the Capitals, Michal Neuvirth, played an outstanding game. Since I talked hockey, I didn’t get a chance to post my picture from flickr. I’ll make up for that today, since they are the same subject. Heading back to New York. On the Friday we were we spent a lot of time doing some of the touristy things, like Grand Central, Central Park, FAO Schwartz and the New York Public Library. I hadn’t planned on stopping at the library, but since we were so close and we hadn’t been there before, I thought that it would be worth a quick peak. We made one lap around and then headed on our way.
The first shot is the front of the library. It was a bit of a pain to process because of all the people walking around in front. I just wish for one second I could get everyone to stand still so I could take the picture. I think for all the HDR photographers out there, we should be given a remote to stop people as we please. Just a thought. Anyways, it is a five shot handheld HDR, and HDR Efex did a decent job of cutting down the ghosting. I had to tonemap the +1 image to mask in all the people, and I also did a 100% mask of the -2 exposure for the sky. Desaturated the reds a bit, added a blue curves layer to the sky and applied a Tonal Contrast filter in Color Efex. Lastly did some high pass sharpening.
For today’s flickr post, we have one of the hall ways inside the library. Same issue with the ghosts here. Five exposure handheld, tonemapped the the +2 image for the people and masked them in. Then I tonemapped the -2 and masked in the window at the back of the scene, as I was metered on the shadows and the window was very blown out. Added a slight blur around the edge of the frame to put the focus on the center and finally added a Tonal Contrast filter.
That’s all for today my friends. See you tomorrow.
A Classic rematch
Heinz Field the day after the Classic
Usually coming up with a title is one of the more difficult parts of writing these blog entries, but today was easier than most. If you stopped by on Friday, you read that this evening will be a rematch between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals at CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh. This is not the first time the two teams have played since that cold, rainy New Year’s Day game, but it’s the first time the Caps have been back in town since then. The make up of the Pens is vastly different this time around, with the ranks still being depleted by injuries. It’s going to be a good show none the less, as it is always is when two rivals face off.
Rivalries are one of the best things about sports. Of course every fan dreams about their team winning a championship, as that is the ultimate prize for any league. Individual player awards are nice, but they don’t do a whole lot for the fans. Rivalries though, that is what really gives sports that edge, that intensity, that can’t miss game appeal. It’s amazing how rivalries in games can transcend into the culture of an entire city. Take my hometown, Pittsburgh and their football team the Steelers (notice I said their, not our) and one of their most hated rivals, the Cleveland Browns. The competition between the two teams has spread from the football field and into the streets of the cities, with Cleveland being called “The Mistake on the Lake”, t shirts that say “The only sign of intelligence in Cleveland is ‘Pittsburgh – 170 miles’”, and general ridicule for all things Cleveland. It doesn’t really help that the Browns haven’t been able to really field a competitive football team in years, but I think if they had, it would only fuel the rivalry further.
There will also always be those classic rivalries, like Lakers-Celtics in the NBA, Yankees-Red Sox in baseball, Packers-Vikings in the NFL and Duke-North Carolina in college basketball. But it can be really exciting to watch rivalries grow, like the one between the Pens and Capitals. Sure they have been Eastern (or Wales back in the old days) Conference competitors for decades, but with the emergence of Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin as the two best players in the world, it has taken the feud to an all new level and makes them the most exciting two teams to watch in the league, especially when they play each other. No matter what happens with for the rest of their careers, Sid and Ovechkin have left their mark on these franchises that will last a lifetime.
On to the shots. I won’t be going through the processing on these, just wanted to share a few sights from the 2011 Winter Classic. Check out the caption below each for the description. You’ll have to excuse the quality on the close ups of Sid, Geno and Ovechkin. We weren’t allowed to bring in big cameras, so I had the S95 at full zoom, which doesn’t giving the most crisp shots. The other in game action shots were taken with it as well, and they turned out great.
Opening faceoff
Puck behind the net
More board play
Sid and Geno
Alex Ovechkin
Center ice, the day after the game
View towards the open end of Heinz Field
Winter blues
Well, it’s Friday, and is any day better than Friday? Ok, Saturday is equally as awesome, no work to look forward to the next day, a whole day to do nothing. Sunday is okay until around 5, when you realize you have to go to work in less than twelve hours. But Friday. There is just something about getting in your car and heading home on a Friday afternoon, knowing that a weekend of infinite possibilities lies in front of you. And hopefully some photography time. My goal is to motivate myself to be out of bed at 6:00 tomorrow morning to catch the sunrise in downtown Pittsburgh. We’ll see how that turns out.
We’ve had a bit of a warm spell these last few days, with temperatures hitting the upper 60s yesterday. However they are calling for more snow on Monday, as temperatures are going to continue to fall throughout the weekend. This is probably my least favorite time of the year. Don’t get me wrong, I love winter, snow, seeing the ground covered for months, I think it’s great. Winter starts out great, because although it doesn’t officially start until December 22nd, right after Thanksgiving at the end of November I feel that the seasons are changing. Then you have Christmas (my favorite holiday) and New Years, and then in the Northeast US we get most of our snow in January and February, although this year it was pretty much the whole country. Then the weather warms up to low 40s, all the snow melts, it rains a lot and there is just nothing enjoyable about the end of February through late April. I don’t normally look forward to spring and summer so much, but this year I definitely am.
This Monday the Penguins will have the Washington Capitals at home in Consol Energy Center for the first time, and it will mark the first time the Caps will have been in Pittsburgh since the Winter Classic, which the Capitals won on New Year’s Day. It may end up being a bit of a tough one, as the Penguins ranks are still relatively depleted with injuries. In honor of that meet up, today’s post is a shot from the day after the Winter Classic, right outside Heinz Field. Being the spouse of an employee, I got the chance to skate on the ice from the Winter Classic the next day, and had my camera to take as many pictures as I could. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity, because those signs, that ice, will never be there again. It’s not like a simple playoff game, when you know your team will probably make it again next year. This had the possibility to be a once in a lifetime event. I’ll more than likely be posting a few more pictures from that weekend on Monday. For now, this is a shot of North Shore Drive, and you can see the Winter Classic banner hanging from the lamp post, with a bit of the city in the background.
Nothing groundbreaking in terms of processing for this shot. Five exposure HDR processed with HDR Efex. Masked in the entire sky from the -2 exposure as well as the tree branches that were swaying and created a few ghostly looking branches. Added a Tonal Contrast Filter in Color Efex as well as an S Curve in CS5 to give it a bit more contrast. Since it was early afternoon on a sunny day, the whole scene had a very blue tint, so I added a sepia filter to help warm it up a bit. Lastly, did some High Pass sharpening to give it a crisp look.
Thanks for all your visits this week and I hope you all have a great weekend.
Bokeh with a chance of a Fleury
For those of you who live in Pittsburgh, the title to today’s post is one of many times we’ve heard (insert hockey term/any other noun here) with a chance of Fleury. And for that I apologize. However, I have never used it anywhere on my blog, or I don’t think ever in my life, so I feel we are all entitled to one use. I also understand that there may be some non hockey folks who read this blog, so I should at least tell you that Mar Andre Fleury is the goalie for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and a guy with a last name as cold as Fleury couldn’t have ended up on a better team than the Penguins. One more thing to explain to any non photography readers out there. Bokeh describes the appearance of the out of focus areas of a photograph. All those little circles you see in the back of pictures, in the out of focus areas? Yep, bokeh. It’s a result of using a shallow depth of field that comes from the maximum aperture (or smallest f stop) on a camera. Ok. Enough of that. On to the post.
Like I’ve said in prior posts, I usually like to post pictures from the Pens game that I was at the night before. Well, there was a Penguin game last night, but it was not in Pittsburgh. In fact, it was Denver, and while I’m sure that I could have been there, taken this picture, flown home and started writing this in the time since the game ended, I’m not sure I’d be so much writing now as I would be sleeping on my desk. Since I am awake at my deks, we must assume that I didn’t go the game, and I took this shot at last Thursday’s game in the ‘Burgh. I did feel compelled to post a picture of our great goaltender Marc Andre Fleury as he was spectacular last night in net for the Pens. As you may or may not know, the Pens have been decimated by injuries this year, with the list of players currently out: Sidney Crosby (concussin), Evgeni Malkin (knee), Mark Letestu (knee), Eric Godard (suspended), Matt Cooke (suspended), Chris Kunitz (lower body), Eric Tangradi (concussion), Dustin Jeffrey (lower body), Arron Asham (lower body) and Mike Comrie (hip). This includes a league MVP (Sid), Rookie of the year (Sid), scoring champ (Malkin), playoff MVP (Malkin), top goal scorer (Sid) and Stanley Cup champion (all but Jeffrey, Tangradi and Letestu). It’s been a tough road the past few games, as we had lost four of our last five. But last night Fleury showed up big time, making big save after big save to keep us in the game, killing off power plays and giving us the chance to take the game into overtime. With time winding down both in the overtime period and on the power play for the Pens, Tyler Kennedy ripped a rebound past Peter Budaj (pronounced Boo-die…a bit weird, but a cool name none the less) for the game winner. 3-2 Pens win.
While there is bokeh in the Fleury shot, that’s not the bokeh I was referring to in the title I mentioned yesterday that I was trying to step out of my element a bit more in terms of photography and not just post wide angle cityscapes and sunflares. Today is another attempt to do that. Staying strong today with the 50mm 1.4 (there’s that large aperture that allows for that big bokeh), I was out and about before a Pens game a few weeks back and happened upon this railing with some people walking towards me and some cars in the background. Dialed it down to the 1.4 aperture, crouched down low, waited for the people to get a bit closer and snapped away. I was going for a bit more of an abstract feel here, and I thought it was an added bonus that you can see the reflection of the path and where it meets the grass in the reflection.
Just because it’s not an HDR doesn’t mean that I didn’t process it. I don’t think that I’ve posted an unprocessed picture to flickr in years. Literally years. More than two for sure. Seeing as this just over my second year on flickr, that tells you how much I love to process pictures. Opened in Camera RAW, moved the clarity way up, decreased the saturation and increased the vibrance and contrast. Kicked it over the Color Efex where it got a Low Key Filter and a Pro Contrast Filter to get rid of the color cast that I didn’t like. Enhanced the red lights in the background and added a bit of a vignette. That’s all she wrote.
And that’s all I’m going to write today. I’ll be back tomorrow though, for those of your who were worrying.
P.S. – Yesterday’s beer? Guiness.
A different perspective
Back after a bit of break from the blogging world. I hope that everyone had a great weekend, as I know I did! Watched the Pens come back and win on Friday, celebrated the wife’s birthday and Saturday then watched the Steelers play a pathetic game and lose the Super Bowl Sunday. I was probably one of only people in the city who was absolutely ecstatic over the Steeler loss. We were at a good friend’s house for the game who is a die hard Steelers fan, and it was everything I could do to not be jumping up and down and screaming. But, I have been harassed my entire life for being a Cowboys fan, so I thought I would just enjoy that moment in silence. I couldn’t wait to get in the car to leave and start cheering! All in all a good time. I was a bit under the weather yesterday morning and was also pretty busy at work so I wasn’t able to post anything. Don’t worry though. No more months at a time between posts. Like I’ve said before, I’m kind of digging this posting everyday!
Today will be more strictly about photography that my normal rantings and ravings about who knows what. Part of it is the fact that I am still pretty busy at work and trying to play a bit of catch up today, and the other piece is because I am a day behind in my posts! We’ll start with a shot that I posted yesterday but took a few weeks back on my way home from work. It was during one of those really heavy, afternoon snowfalls that coincided perfectly with my drive home. I take the same route home everyday, and I almost look forward to when it snows and I’m driving, because it gives me the chance to get shots like this. I really liked how the end of the road just vanished into the snow and how you can see the snow actually coming down. It almost has a cinematic feel to it.
The processing for this one was actually pretty easy. It was a five handheld exposure HDR that I processed with HDR Efex. I moved it over the CS5, desaturated it a bit (not that I needed to), added a bit more green to the street signs, threw on a quick S Curve, and there you have it. I didn’t do a Tonal Contrast filter or noise reduction because frankly I don’t think it needed either one!
For my next shot (doesn’t that remind you of those cheesy magicians from TV?), we are heading back to New York. I just can’t get enough of that city, I just find myself going back to my pictures again and again and I keep find more pictures I want to process. This is one of those. I took this on our last day there right after we got off the Chambers St. subway stop. I’m not going to lie, it took me about five minutes to figure out what this building was, because at first I wasn’t sure what stop we got off. I had to pull up Google maps and literally drive down the street in Street View to see which building it was, and finally I found that it is the Public Advocates Office of New York (just in case you were wondering). All the angles and architecture made for a great photograph.
I spent a bit more time processing this one. Similar to the last one, this is a five exposure handheld HDR put through the HDR Efex process. However, since I used the HDR Method “Dark Soft” the sky was a bit darker than I liked and there was some noticeable haloing around the arches and pillars. I brought in the -2 exposure (since I was metered on the building, the sky was very blown out in all the other exposures), tonemapped it, and then masked in almost the entire sky. I then dodged the top of some of the pillars and adjusted the shadows. Added both a Tonal Contrast filter and High Pass Sharpening filter to the overall shot, as well as decreased overall saturation. Straightened the shot and presented it to you, in full HDR glory.
That’s all for today folks, make sure you check back tomorrow!
Policing the ice
So my goal of this blog was not to become a Penguins centric blog, as there are already multiple Pens’ blogs out there. The original goal was to post some pictures and talk a little more in depth about the shot than I do on flickr. However, as I am trying to blog everyday (well, every weekday), it can get a bit boring and repetitive if I am just saying “Here’s this shot, this is how I took it” and so on, and that it is. That being said, I’ve tried to add a bit more commentary to my posts to hopefully keep those of your who make the daily (or weekly or monthly) trek to my blog a bit more enjoyable, because if it was just the same pictures I posted on flickr, then you wouldn’t have any reason to come here. I will say this. I have a ton of respect now for newspaper columnists, who have to write every day, though it is a bit easier for them, as the majority of the time they are reporting on news. They are still writing everyday for their job. I do it just for fun. Which I think makes it a bit easier.
Anyways, moving on to more exciting topics: Geno (Evgeni Malkin) is back tonight for the Pens. Oh wait. I realized I never finished my though on the Pens’ blog thing. See that’s what happens to me when I write these. I get off on one tangent and forgot where I parked the firs tangent to get back in and keep going. I think that if you are going to write every day about something, it should be something you are passionate about, because otherwise it won’t be interesting. I am passionate about the Penguins and my photography, so it is very easy for me to write semi creatively about these two things. So while you won’t see Pens’ stuff up every day on here, you will see it. Like yesterday and today.
So Geno’s back, but our stellar rookie center, Mark Letestu, is out four to six weeks for a damaged meniscus from catching an edge on the ice at Madison Square Garden in New York before the Ranger’s game on Tuesday. With Sid the Kid still out recovering from a concussion, it’s great to see Malkin back out there policing the ice (reference to title #1). It means that the opponent has to plan for a superstar and match their lines up accordingly, and just makes it more difficult to get the matchups they want. I’m not saying this demean anything else any of the Pens have done, quite the contrary actually. The depth that we have is some of, if not THE best in the NHL, which has allowed us to gain points in the standing even without the “two headed monster” (Sid and Geno) in the line up. One quick note on the aforementioned phrase. HDR Exposed (aka me) does not condone the use of this saying…actually it is quite discouraged. Just wanted to use it once, get it out of the way, and never use it again. ‘Nough said.
Even though I foster incredible disdain for the Steelers, I would remiss in my blogging duties if I did not at least MENTION the Super Bowl in a few days. Packers vs. Steelers, NFC vs. AFC, the game of all games, the big game, Super Sunday, and all that jazz. I will be attending a party with a whole lot of Steeler faithful. I will also be wearing a Dallas Cowboy jersey. Probably Tony Romo…maybe Miles Austin. Not sure yet. But I will say this. Steeler fans are in for a rude awakening. Their beloved defense (which is incredible) is going to fall hard. Prediction: Packers 31, Steelers 10, Aaron Rodgers throws for 320 yards and is MVP. Ben Roethlisberger throws two picks and fumbles, and the Packers defense lives up to its billing. Let’s go Pack. Now, where is my cheesehead?
Almost forgot about today’s shot with all my other rambling. More from NYC. Another one taken on our last day there, which I think I got my most shots from. I had been trying to get a shot of Bryant Park that I liked; I was trying to use the reflections in the buildings and had tried three other times and got nothing. This was my final attempt, and as we were walking across the street, I stopped to grab this five exposure HDR. Of course, the light turned green right when I stopped and this cop car was right in the middle of the road (reference to title #2). I just said ok, forget, I got a ton of other shots. But…
…then I got home and processed it. Did my usual settings in HDR Efex, and thought to myself, “This isn’t too bad”. Took it back into CS5, masked in the moving people and the police car, applied a Tonal Contrast filter in Color Efex, burned the sky right about the horizon to give it that orange glow, boosted the blues to make the police car stand out, and while it isn’t one of my best, in the end, I like it!
That’s all for this week guys! I hope you all have a great weekend!
Did I mention Go Packers yet? I did? Ok, well, GO PACKERS!!!!!!! Yes, I’m done now.
Theatre like no other
I know not everyone who reads this blog this is a hockey fan, but I just have to take a second to talk about the Pittsburgh Penguins game last night. First off, we won, which is always positive, a 3-0 shutout of the lowly New York Islanders (sorry NY fans). It was a bit of a scrappy game from the start, and it just so happened that our scrappy guys got our goals. Tyler Kennedy opened the scoring in the first on a great power play goal from a sharp angle, Chris Kunitz banked one in off Rick DiPietro on a 2-1 with Pascal Dupuis. DiPietro got caught cheating back to Dupuis’ side and Kunitz made him pay.
No scoring in the second, but things got a bit scrappy. Mike Rupp won a fight, there were hard hits all around, with Matt Cooke and Max Talbot really flying around the ice. Max, who was on a 25 game scoring drought, hit two goalposts, got robbed on a seemingly open net, and just couldn’t seem to buy a goal. That was until 40 seconds left when Max, with the Islanders having vacated their net for a sixth attacker, took a backhand pass from Craig Adams and buried a 70 footer. 3-0, Pens up, game in the bag.
But, this piece is called “Theatre like no other” for a reason. Well, two actually. The first reason is what happened next. With 20 seconds left, Cooke raced down to try to beat an icing call. Skating past the net, DiPietro, who had taken some hard shots from Cooke in the last meeting between these two teams, stepped out of his crease and through a blocker to Cooke’s face. A scrum ensued in the corner, when all of a sudden, the coolest, most awesome, rarest, exciting things that can happen in a hockey game, happened. Out of the corner of the screen you see DiPietro start skating away from the pile towards center ice. Then you see a referee skate at full tilt after him. Brent Johnson (pictured above), the backup for goalie Mar Andre Fleury, was at the Islanders blue line, gloves off, helmet off, ready to take on DiPietro. The referee did everything he could to stop Johnson, but he was on a mission to repay the Islanders netminder for the cheap shot he had just delivered. Both goalies grabbed the other one’s jersey, and Johnson, who is right handed, landed a left hook to DiPietro’s jaw, sending him to the ice in a heap. Brent then knelt over to pof him, one had holding him down, the other raised in a fist, not ready to punch, just showing his vanquished foe that these Penguins are not who you want to mess with.
You don’t seen goalie fights hardly ever anymore, especially now since Patrick Roy is out of the league, who was famous for fights with both Chris Osgood and Dominik Hasek. But to see the soft spoken Brent Johnson, drop the gloves against some like DiPietro, who deserved everything he got from Johnnie, it was just a sight to see. I may have to get a Brent Johnson jersey.
Sorry for the recap, but it was just too awesome not to talk about! Today we go back to New York and take a look at the Lunt Fontanne Theatre on West 46th Street, right outside of Times Square. This theatre was right next to our hotel, the Marriott Marquis, and I knew I had to get a picture of it at night. The first night I took my five handheld brackets, but the last two were a bit blurry, something I discovered back in the room. I didn’t want to lug my drop out for a night on the town, so I bumped up the ISO the next night and gave it another shot. This time I got five crisp exposures. Perfect! We actually debated about maybe going to see the Addams Family, which you can see was playing there. Maybe next time.
On to the processing. Like I said, this is a five handheld bracketed shot that I processed with HDR Efex. The lights on the front of the building were kind of throwing me off, as they make the front of the building different colors with different light sources. I ended up just decreasing the saturation the oranges, and that did the trick! I had to mask back in the people on the street and a bit of the blown out highlights from the Times Square signs as well. Added a Tonal Contrast filter to everything but the sky and recovered some of the dark shadows, added a bit more color to the blue sky, saved, uploaded!
See you tomorrow!
The best and the rest
First off, I wanted to thank all of you who read and commented on my article yesterday. I couldn’t believe so many people stopped by and it ended up being my most heavily trafficked blog day ever! I really appreciate it!
This weekend is All Star weekend both for the NFL and NHL. One I don’t care about at all, one I was really excited to watch, but probably won’t even tune in now. The one that is completely meaningless in my eyes is the NFL Pro Bowl. First off, they have it the week before the Super Bowl, meaning that the players from the top two teams remaining (notice I didn’t say best) aren’t going to be there. To me that was half the fun of the Pro Bowl, watching the Super Bowl champs play against the other all stars. Not anymore in the NFL.
The NHL All Star game I was really excited about a few weeks ago. Sidney Crosby (pictured above) was leading the league in points and goals and beat the rest of the league by over 150,000 all star votes. I mean that is just insane. Center Evgeni Malkin was voted it, goalie Marc Andre Fleury, and defenseman Kris Letang was voted in as a write in. But, since Sid and Geno (Malkin) are still out with injury, only Fleury and Letang will play.
I had a quick question too for all of my Canadian friends. How come when Pittsburgh plays in Ottawa and Montreal, Sidney Crosby gets booed worse than anywhere in the league outside of Philadelphia? I know he is competition, but he won the gold medal in the Olympics for you! I mean, I was rooting for the USA, and while I am sad we lost, I will take a loss by the hands of Sid any day. He’s the greatest player in the world, and before his career is over, he will be mentioned as one of the top three hockey players of all time, up there with Gretzky and Lemieux. I completely understand that I am biased seeing as he plays for my team, but he’s a clean player, a class act, took the team on his shoulders after Mario retired when he was only 20. If the USA would have won in dramatic fashion on an ovetime goal, I think it would be hard for me to boo the player that scored it, even if he played for the Flyers or the Capitals. Just wondering.
So, finally, today’s shot. I took this last Friday evening before a happy hour with some friends in Station Square. I got there a little early to do some shooting, but I ended up with just a handful of shots because it was about 0°F, with a windchill that made it seem like -10°F. Seeing as I was on a bridge and the wind just whips down the river, it was all I could do to wait for the seven brackets and run back to my car. Which I parked in a garage that was a good ten minute walk. Genius I know. The bridge I am on is the Smithfield St. Bridge that is right next to Station Square in the South Side. It’s one of the classier bridges in downtown, with great iron work on the top that I’ve showcased a few other times.
Let’s get technical, technical, I wanna get technical. Sorry about that, I don’t normally break out into song during my posts. Like I said earlier, this is a seven exposure HDR processed with HDR Efex. I kicked it over the Color Efex and applied a Tonal Contrast filter on the buildings and water (left the sky alone) and then applied a Low Key Filter to the entire image. Burned a bit of the sky in spots and added a warming filter to tone down some of the blues. I had gotten there a bit too late to get the sunset and a bit too early for the blue hour. Oh well there’s always next time!
Thanks for stopping by, and if I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night!
Meet and greet
So yesterday I had the chance to meet some of the Pittsburgh Penguins at an autograph session at one of our local malls. You donate to charity and then get to stand in line for a few hours to get some autographs. It’s the third year that I’ve done it, but it is still pretty cool! I know I’m not a little kid, but it’s hard still not to be a little star struck around these guys. I mean here there are, world class, Stanley Cup champion athletes, sitting right in front of you! You see people getting jerseys, pennants, flags, shirts, hats, pucks signed, which is all well and good, but for me, one of the most exciting parts is having them sign a picture that I took. Then I know that no one else has an autograph like mine! Just wanted to say thanks to the Pittsburgh Penguins for putting the event on and of course Pascal Dupuis, Eric Godard and Tyler Kennedy for taking the time out of their day to sit down and sign autographs for their fans!
Today’s shot is a bit different than my last couple weeks worth of posts, because it is not an HDR and it is not a busy New York scene (though it kinda still is); it’s me! This is a shot that my wife too on our last day in the city when we were on the Brooklyn Bridge. She has a nice eye for taking pictures and I keep trying to get her to come out shooting with me, but she won’t! One of these days I’ll get her out! Anyways, every once and a while she will ask for my S95 and say “Let me get a picture of you.” On this occasion I thought sure, why not, struck my best action pose, and this is what she got!
Now, just because she takes good pictures doesn’t mean she edits them. I wanted to do something a bit different with this one and not just a tonemapped single exposure HDR. So, I plopped it in Photoshop and the first thing I did was recover some of the blown out sky. And this point in the day it was a bit overcast, so the sky was a little “Eh”. Then I thought, “Why don’t I just do the whole thing in B&W?” So I did! Ran it through Nik’s Silver Efex, used a veryyyyyyyyyyyyy slight sepia color filter, a bit more structure and the vignette and was feeling pretty good about it! Back to CS5, blurred the background a bit as I was taking a movie before this shot and forgot to switch back to Aperture Priority and f2 (I think she just used Auto) to give a nice depth of field. Added a bit of grain for a film effect too. So there ya go! That’s me!
Look at that, you got to meet three professional hockey players and a very amateur photographer today…we’ll work on the greet another time!
Wounded Wings and Candid Captures
Woo hoo, Pens win! Went to the Pens-Red Wings game last night as we emerged victorious 4-1. Penalty shot goals, more awesome penalty killing…all around a great game. Although let’s be honest: it’s hard to say this was a REAL rematch when they had 7 guys on the injured list, including Datsyuk and Howard. Doesn’t matter in the win column, if they had the Pittsburgh Pirates playing for them, still counts as win.
It’s really not right to bash the Pirates I guess. I live here though, have watched this 18 year collapse, so I think I’m allowed…I mean 18 straight years of sub .500 ball? Are you kidding me? Oh wait, that’s right. They’re rebuilding. Rebuilding what? The Pyramids? Ancient Rome? A full size Empire State Building with toothpicks? The Pens rebuilt in 4 years.
Speaking of the Pens, the shot above is from the game last night. It’s a shot of Craig Adams taking a shot in warm ups. In case you ask, no, those are not my seats, I just sneak down there for practice. He’s one of my favorite players, vital to the #1 ranked penalty kill the league. Not the most well known, but we never would have won a Cup without him.
On to today’s shot (finally). We’re heading back to New York! This is another one that I took from the Brooklyn Bridge on the last day that we were in New York, Sunday. As you can imagine, there are plenty of other people trying to get pictures at the same time. I thought that I would try to get a shot of one of these photographers. This guy was pretty serious, and he never took his face away from the camera. Took a ton of pictures, never looked at the viewfinder. Not sure what he was shooting, but he had no idea we were even there! Rattled off 5 handheld exposures, and away we went!
I’m liking this blogging everyday type thing…I’ll think I’ll keep up with it! No weekends (well, maybe Sunday, depending on how my Saturday night was), but I think I can do everyday!
Until tomorrow!
Congrats to Sid, Fleury and Canada!
~Sid before the Detroit game last January
So I know that I may be a bit late on this, but I felt compelled to comment. We all know by now that Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal for Canada as they completed their gold medal run witha 3-2 overtime victory against the US on Sunday. And I have been hearing a lot of negativity around Sid in the past few days. Seeing as I live in Pittsburgh, this bothers me. Now, I don’t want seem like I am un-American. I was very vehemently rooting for the US, jumping on top of my couch and screaming when Parise tied it up with some 24 seconds left. I wish they would have won. But the fact that they didn’t, and it was because of Sid, doesn’t really bother me. In fact it makes me happy.
Had I felt this way if any other Penguin would have won it? Maybe. I would have loved to see Geno win the gold, but I would have hated to see Ovechkin win it. It comes down to this. Sid is a champion, a class act, and the captain who brough the Stanley Cup back to my hometown, Pittsburgh. He is having the best season of his life so far at 42 goals, he was the youngest captain in the history of the NHL, and the youngest captain to win a Cup. If you are from Philly, New York, Detroit, Washington, sure hate Sid, I don’t care. We beat all of you in the last 2 years in the playoffs (Philly twice). But if you are from Pittsburgh, and cheer and scream and root for Sidney Crosby every day, and defend him against all those fans from those other cities, don’t say you are upset at him for beating the US.
In my mind, he deserves it. And the bottom line is, he earned it.
Let’s go Pens!
Ok, so the last time I posted a picture before the Pen’s game I went to they lost. But, seeing as I don’t believe in superstition, I figured I would try it again! This is a panorama of Mellon Arena from my iPhone, then put through the Tilt Sihift generator app to come up with this. I thought it looked pretty cool!
Tonight we play the Caps for the first time since we destroyed them 6-1 in Game 7 of last year’s semis. I have been looking forward to this game all year!!
We are riding a 6-4 win the other night against the Islanders, a great back and forth game. The Devils have been on a bit of a slide as well, and since they are ahead of us, that’s a good thing!!!
LET’S GO PENS!!!!
The showdown
Sid after the Flyers Series in 2008
So tonight we play the Flyers!!! I haven’t been to a Flyers game yet this year, went last year, and saw the Pens win in OT. I am pumped for the game, wearing my new Craig Adams jersey, and hopefully the Pens can stay out of the slide they were in (they lost 5 in a row, but won on Tuesday night!), and make it 2 in a row.
We have beat the Flyers 3 times already this year (5-4, 6-1, and 3-2 in a shootout with Sid getting the winner!), so let’s make it 4 in a row boys!!
HDR Exposed 