End of the day
So today’s the last day on the old blog. You know, six months ago I probably would not even care. But I’ve gotten used to how things work around here, got used to the format, how to post, add pictures. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to get emotional *sniff *sniff*…
Ok, well now that THAT’S done with, I really am excited. I’ve spent a ton of time this week getting everything ready, and while it may be a few weeks until I am at the level I’d like to be at, I have it in a pretty good place right now. So tomorrow, when you all go to visit hdrexposed.wordpress.com, you will be taken to the new site. I’m anxious to hear all of your opinions, so please let me know what you think.
Today’s shot was meant to be a bit symbolic of the setting sun, moving a new site, you get the idea. I took this last week at a school near our house where my wife and I will go play basketball in the evening sometimes. I was really impressed with the lack of noise in this shot, as I had forgotten to change my camera settings and was at ISO 1,000. With my old D40X, if I used ISO 400 I got visible noise, but it seemed like the D700 handled it just fine.
The HDR is made up of 7 handheld brackets processed with Photomatix then edited in CS5. I did some slight shadow and highlight adjustment to start off with, then added a blue curves adjustment layer for the sky. Added a very slight Tonal Contrast filter from Color Efex as well as a Local Contrast boost and Turbo Boost in onOne PhotoTools. Added a bit of Clarity as well and called it a day.
See you all on the new site tomorrow. Take care.
Open to possibilities
A quick post today, as I have some stuff to wrap up at work before the long holiday weekend. Website is coming along as well, and I’m still targeting to get it up and running by the end of next weekend but seeing as I’ve never done this kind of thing before, we’ll see.
Another shot from the Pirate game I went to a couple weeks ago. One of my favorite things about PNC Park is the fact that you can see the city skyline from pretty much every seat in the stadium. This is a view from one of the rotundas leading to the upper levels.
For this I combined 5 handheld exposures in Photomatix, then tonemapped the +2 exposure to mask in both the flag and the people, as they were both obviously moving. The scoreboard had changed between shots too, so I took the -1 exposure to mask that back in. Finally, Tonal Contrast, Pro Contrast and Progressive Sharpening filters were added, along with a desaturation layer to finish the shot.
I hope all of you who are celebrating Memorial Day (and those of your who aren’t) have a great weekend. See you on Monday.
Focused on the now
I don’t normally get too philosophical on my posts, but today I think I might, as this will be a shorter post.
It seems like we (myself included) are always looking ahead, looking forward to something in the future, be it a vacation, a wedding, a graduation, holiday, or simply the weekend. Most of the time, there is nothing wrong with that at all, especially in regards to major life events, like a wedding or the birth of a child. Life goes by so quick and when we spend time hoping and waiting for things to come, it can make it go even quicker. Sometimes, we just need to take a step back and take a look around us to enjoy where we are and what we are doing right now. If we spend every day just waiting for tomorrow, have we really gotten everything we could out of today?
On to today’s shot, which inspired the sentiment of my blog today. I’ve taken a shot similar to this in downtown Pittsburgh before, and while I really like it, I took that shot in the middle of the day, so the light was pretty harsh and the background was just ok. I like this one a lot better, because the background, even though it is out of focus, gives you a wider variety of colors. I even snuck a sunflare in there, which I didn’t think that I would be able to get at f4.
This is a seven exposure HDR that I laid on the road and blocked traffic to get and then processed in Photomatix. I had to do a little masking on the upper left and right hand corners of the shot to get rid of minor haloing there. I boosted overall saturation, as well as added a curves layer of green and yellow to enhance the trees and line on the road. Finally I added a Tonal Contrast filter (Color Efex) and Turbo Boost filter (onOne PhotoTools) to complete the shot.
Thanks for stopping by guys and gals, see you tomorrow.
Topsy turvy
Well, I finally took the plunge. Went out a registered a domain and am in the process of completely revamping my blog/website. I’m not exactly sure how long the whole process is going to take, but I hope to have everything up and running by the end of next week, so stay tuned. I also wanted to say a big thank you to Chris Frailey, who even got his wife involved in answering some questions I had, and also to Jason Hines and Chris Nitz, who also were able to help me. All three of these guys are fine photographers; please make sure to check out their sites if you haven’t already.
For today’s shot we head to Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York, where I was on Saturday afternoon for a friend’s wedding, just in attendance, not as the photographer. On a side note, they had four photographers at their wedding, which I had never seen before. Anyways, we had about two and half hours to kill between the ceremony and the reception and since it was a beautiful day, we opted to find a park to hang out at. This was the closest, so we made our way down there. We saw a bunch of different weddings come through, which was extremely interesting to see, as there were brides, grooms and bridal parties of all makes and models.
This is a five exposure HDR processed with Photomatix and then kicked over the CS5. I first did an overall curves adjustment, then opened it in onOne PhotoTools. I applied the WoW Landscape filter and then a slight Firenze filter, to give it the bit of a reddish hue. Next up was Color Efex, where I added a Pro Contrast filter and the vignette. Removed a few dust spots, flipped it on its head, and shipped it off to the blog. Enjoy.
Happy Wednesday everyone and thanks for stopping by.
Cutting through
Thanks for all of you who stopped by on the first candid Monday yesterday. I think that I keep them going, so look for more in the coming weeks.
Back to the HDRs and sunflares today. It was kind of an accident how I stumbled across how to do sunflares, and before that I never even though to shoot directly into the sun. I never really knew that to get those sharp, pinpoint flares early in my photographic/HDR career, I was just taking pictures. One day I was out on my front porch trying fiddling around with HDRs and after scrolling through my brackets on the LCD I exited out of the menu but kept scrolling, which set my aperture to f22. I lined up the next shot and fired off the shots, downloaded them on my computer and was a little curious as to why this one shot looked different than the rest. I checked the EXIF and saw the aperture was f22 and I was hooked.
This particular sunflare is over downtown Pittsburgh during rush hour earlier this month. I had to wait around for about 10 minutes to get everyone out of the scene, and just when I was ready to take the shot, this kid came and say down on the bench. After seeing that he wasn’t going to leave, I took the shot anyway, and left him in to give the scene a bit of a human element. It was pretty windy on this particular day, so I had some motion blur in the trees, which I actually chose not to mask out, the reason being that it made the scene look a little too static for my liking.
This is a 5 exposure handheld HDR processed with Photomatix and then shipped over to CS5. I added blue, green and red adjustment layers for the sky, grass and trees, respectively, and also added a very slight shadow adjust to bring back some of the buildings, as they were fairly dark. Ran it though Color Efex to give it a Tonal Contrast filter and that was that.
Take care until tomorrow.
Centurial
Well, today is my 100th post on my blog. Of the last 99, 26 of them were from 2009 and 2010 combined with the rest coming this year, which is kind of crazy, given the fact that I just started really committing to my blog in late January. Daily traffic to my blog has tripled since then as well, so I just wanted to take the time to thank everyone who is a regular visitor and also those of you who just mosey on by every once and while. I really appreciate all the support I receive from everyone. Here’s to another couple hundred. Or thousand.
Today’s shot is one that I really don’t even remember taking. I mean, I can believe I took it, but as I was looking through my pictures from Mt. Washington I saw it and thought, “Huh”. So I went ahead and processed it and really liked the way that it came out. This is a view up the Monongahela River, one of the two rivers that meet at the Point to form the Ohio River. You also get a view of some of the distinct bridges we have in the city (from bottom to top, excluding the second from the bottom which is the trolley bridge): Smithfield Street, Liberty, 10th Street and Birmingham. In the center of the shot you can see the Allegheny County Jail (which you also saw a few posts ago) and in the foreground is the top of the Grand Concourse in Station Square. Off in the distance is the top of the Cathedral of Learning, the iconic building on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in Oakland. All that being said, I think my favorite thing about this shot is the shadow that is created by the city lights of the trolley bridge on the water. You would normally expect to see reflections, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the shadows.
On to the processing. This is a seven exposure HDR processed with Photomatix. It was a bit flat coming out of the tonemapping, so I applied an S curve to bring back some of the contrast. I applied a Pro Contrast filter in Color Efex, as well as a warming filter in Photoshop to cool the entire image. In onOne PhotoTools I used the Progressive Sharpening filter to being out some details and the Firenza filter to also cool down the blues. A bit of spot healing in the sky to get rid of some dust specks and that was that.
Again, thank you for all of your support on my last 100 posts. I hope that you all will continue to follow me in the future.
Blinded by the light
You know how sometimes when you are out shooting you get home and say to yourself, “I literally do not like any of shots”? Some may be ok, but most are just like “Eh”. But then there are the times (at least for me being a primarily HDR photographer) that it’s almost like I want to hurry up and get home and cut the photowalk short because I just want to start processing my images, I am that excited about that. My little walk on Mt. Washington a few weeks ago was like that, and this shot in particular.
So my last post featured a candid I took as I was wrapping up the early part of my walk, before dinner and this one wraps up the end of the night. I have been on Mt. Washington countless times since I got my camera and never once noticed this glowing red cross on the church on Grandview. I’m not sure if it’s because I never really am down this far on Grandview or if I just never looked at it, but when I was walking back to my car, I knew I had to get a shot of it. Luckily there was still a fair amount of traffic coming through, so I was able to get a nice light trail going through the frame as well. One of my favorite parts of the shot is the reflection of the light trails along the railing on the right. I didn’t even notice it at first when I was looking at the shots on the LCD, but as soon as the HDR popped up I noticed them. I’ve included the selective color version below and am open to suggestions and opinions as to which one you like better.
This a 5 exposure (-1 to +3) HDR processed with Photomatix with all additional edits done in Photoshop CS5. The first thing I had to do was tonemap the +3 exposure to help lighten the church and then do a light mask on it (25%), as the HDR process made it a little too dark for my liking. I also used the +2 exposure to mask in some of the light trails, mainly on the left had side of the frame, to give them a more continuous look. The bright yellow sign was blown out from the +3 exposure, so I used the -1 exposure to recover some of the lost details there. Next, I added a Pro Contrast filter in Color Efex and a blue curves layer to make the sky a little more vibrant.
To get the selective color, I did a SelectàColor Range and picked all the reds, oranges and yellow, minus the sign in the foreground. I then used Silver Efex to convert to do the black and white conversion.
That about wraps it up today. See you again tomorrow.
Stepping up to the plate
A couple more shots from the Bucco game that I went to this Tuesday this time with some action shots thrown in with an HDR.
The shot above is the view from the rotunda over left field that leads up to the multiple levels of PNC Park. We got there a little late, about midway through the bottom of the first, and seeing as I have never had my D700 at a Pirate game I wanted to get this shot. I was a little disappointed that the sky wasn’t clearer when I took this shot, but that’s the beauty of HDR: It can take a flat, otherwise uninteresting sky and turn it into this.
The shot above is probably one of my favorite from the game. The Pirate pictured is first baseman Steve Pearce, who I had never heard of before this very at bat. I know, I know, it’s a bit sad, but my favorite MLB team is the Atlanta Braves, so I can’t keep up with the merry-go-round of prospects/rookies/no-names that the Pirates parade through year after year. Anyways, Pearce hit a soft grounder up the middle of the infield and legged it out for an infield hit. I was able to capture him JUST as he was hitting first base, with the ball clearly still in the air. What I found most interesting however, is that you can’t see a single other player in the frame. It looks like they are all alone on the field. Didn’t plan it like that, but that’s how it came out.
The next action shot is of catcher Ryan Doumit, who is having a modestly productive year after a couple of slow ones. A lot of people were calling for his departure from the Bucs, but they kept him around, and he has been consistent so far. This was one of the last shots that I took, and it shows Doumit just before he made contact. He didn’t get a hit on this pitch, but he scorched a line drive to the outfield that was caught.
On to the processing. The HDR is a 5 exposure handheld HDR processed with Photomatix. As with the last couple, I masked in the entire crowd to get rid of the ghosting. I also did a bit of masking on the lights, as I was metered on the dark stands (d’oh) and they were a bit blown out. I added a blue curves layer to the sky to enhance what little blue sky there was, and also a green curves layer to the field to help it stand out. In Color Efex I used the Tonal Contrast filter, and in onOne PhotoTools I added a Turbo Boost. What a cool effect name. Turbo Boost.
I processed the action shots similarly. Both were opened in Camera Raw where I increased the clarity and desaturated the images. Moved them over the CS5 where I added a Tonal Contrast later to both of them, increased then vibrance, and opened them in onOne PhotoTools. They both got the same Progressive Sharpening, and I added an extra filter to the second one of Ryan Doumit at bat, the Hollywood Intensity. Pretty happy with how they turned out.
That’s all for this week folks. Hope you all have a great weekend. See you on Monday.
Permanent residence
So I went to my second Pirates game of the year last night, actually it was my second in less than a month, which hasn’t happened in years. The first game I went to was great; there was a beer tasting before the game, they Buccos jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the first and they ended up winning. Last night? Not to much. Got stomped by the Dodgers 10-3, and looked very much like the sub-.500 ball club that they’ve looked like for the last 20 years, taking up permanent residence in the bottom half of the standings. I did, however, get a ton of great shots, which I will share with you in the next few days.
For now, how about another view of the city? This is more of what I was talking about yesterday in taking a different approach to shooting from Mt. Washington. In the center of this shot is actually the new Allegheny County Jail (by new I mean newer), which is right along the parkway that leads you out of the ‘Burgh to the east. I thought that it was pretty cool how you can see four different levels of streets, two above the jail and two below it, and light trails on all of them. The street that I find the most interesting is the one that is directly behind the jail, as it is one continuous streak all the way along the road. The three bridges you see here are (in order from bottom to top) the Liberty Bridge, which takes you to the South Hills (where I live), the 10th Street Bridge (which takes you from the end of the South Side to downtown) and the Birmingham Bridge, which also connects the South Side to the bottom of Oakland, where the University of Pittsburgh is located. The bridge at the very bottom of the frame isn’t a bridge for cars; it connects the trolley line from Station Square to downtown Pittsburgh.
This is a seven exposure HDR processed in Photomatix and Photoshop CS5. I first tonemapped the +2 exposure to get the light trails I wanted and masked in all the roads. I did a color cast removal of the blues/purples in Color Efex as well as add a Tonal Contrast layer. In onOne PhotoTools I added a sharpening layer and another filter tha cooled the reds and warmed the blues. Finally, I did some selective coloring on the reds (decreased saturation) and the greens (increased vibrance and saturation). Added the logo and uploaded.
Halfway there guys. Friday will be here soon. Until tomorrow though, adios.
Streaking through town
Ok, so nobody thought that I was really going to post something about me or anyone else streaking through down, did they? Probably wouldn’t be the best move to try to drive more traffic to my blog, trust me.
Anyways, more from Mt. Washington. For those of you who haven’t been to Pittsburgh or who don’t follow me regularly, it is a neighborhood above the South Side of the city that provides an excellent view of the Steel City. Originally named Coal Hill for the coal seam that ran at its base, the name was changed to Mt. Washington in 1876 and has been ever since. One area of Mt. Washington that I have yet to photograph are the Duquesne and Monongahela Inclines, which are the oldest continuous running inclines in the world. I actually haven’t even been on one in probably 15 years, when I was just a kid.
You can get so caught up in the view of the skyline and the bright lights of the city and the various stadiums that sometimes you tend to look at interesting areas that you can’t see that with a wide angle lens. Like I said yesterday, I put on the 70-200 2.8 on this particular trip and tried to capture some of the more intricate workings of the city from a unique vantage point. Above is one of them. This area is known as the Point and immediately to the left of the busy roadways is where Fort Pitt, named for William Pitt who also gave his name to the city, used to stand. You can still see its outline at Point State Park. This is an HDR that I’ve taken twice before, but never with the D700 and never with this kind of glass, and I really like how the light trails turned out. It was Sunday night so that traffic was kind of intermittent, but I plan to go back during rush hour to see if I can get any more extreme light trails.
This is a 7 exposure HDR processed with Photomatix and then kicked over the CS5. I did some shadow adjusts and then tonemapped the +2 exposure in Photomatix so that I could mask in the better set of light trails from the brackets. Did a curves adjustment on the greens and reds and then put it through Color Efex to apply a Tonal Contrast filter. Finally, did some sharpening in onOne PhotoTools and called it a day.
Thanks for stopping by. See y’all tomorrow.
View from the top
First off, happy belated Mother’s Day to all you moms out there. I didn’t get a chance to post anything yesterday, so I missed the chance to actually send the wishes on the actual holiday.
I spent the afternoon yesterday with my family at my sister’s apartment on Mt. Washington, which is featured above and many other times on this blog and my flickr page. I hadn’t planned on taking very many pictures, as it seems like I have every conceivable view from the various overlooks that watch over the city, but there is just something about being up there that you can’t help but take a few brackets. I did try something a little different (which you will see in a few days), which was put the 70-200 2.8 on and get some HDRs at 200mm. That is an incredible piece of glass, and I think that I may start using it more often.
I also tried to do something a little different with today’s shot in terms of composition. Most of the time that a photographer is up there (myself included) they get so mesmerized by the skyline that they forget about Station Square, which is right below the far overlooks. In the summer, the trees grow so thick that you can’t really see through them, but they aren’t quite at that point yet, so I thought that I would give a view both of the far end of Station Square as well as the skyline. It was pretty cool how the entire city was glowing, even Station Square, and how the parking lot looked like some kind of spaceship ready to take off.
This is a seven exposure HDR processed with Photomatix with some touch up work done in CS5. I masked in the entire +3 exposure, as there wasn’t a whole lot of noise in the sky, but I wanted to even it out a bit. I also used the -3 exposure to mask in all the names you see on top of the buildings, as the HDR process really blew them out. Adjusted the red tones down slightly, as they seemed to be too warm for the rest of the shot, and then ran it through both Color Efex (Tonal Contrast and Color Cast Removal) and onOne PhotoTools (sharpening) to give it more punch.
I was going to post the shots that I posted over the weekend, but I don’t think that they really fit the other shot. You are more than welcome to head on over to my flickr site to check on my posts from Saturday and Sunday.
So for some reason last week, my e-mail address associated with my blog was not allowing me to comment on any other blog, no matter the host site. I’ve since updated my e-mail so I should be back to commenting as normal.
Hope you all had a great weekend and have a happy Monday.
Bringing your own sunshine
“Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.”
~Anthony J. D’Angelo
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a Friday post so I thought it was about time to do one. This spring we have had 34 days of rain and only 14 without (and even fewer sunny ones), I thought about the above quote and how appropriate it seemed for anyone living in the western Pennsylvania region over the last few weeks.
I took this shot on one of those few sunny days we’ve had this spring walking around downtown, waiting for the wife and some friends to get out of work. It was actually a perfect day to go on a photowalk, as it wasn’t too warm, there was a slight breeze, the lighting was great in downtown, streets weren’t overly crowded for a Thursday afternoon. I kind of have a thing for capturing sunflares, and when the reflection of one in the USX Building caught my eye, I couldn’t resist the shot.
This is a five exposure HDR processed in Photomatix, Photoshop CS5 and onOne PhotoTools. I did a bit of masking in the sky to get rid of a few halos and dust spots, as well as masked in the cars on the lower right to get rid of some ghosting. Lowered overall saturation and applied the Turbo Boost effect in PhotoTools and called it a wrap.
Thanks for stopping by this week and I hope you all enjoy your weekend.
Back into the fire
At least for today, we will be making a trip back to Carrie Furnace. I know that I’ve been jumping around a lot lately, but I feel like sometimes I will go to process an image and think, “Eh, not really feeling this one today”. Then I’ll see the exact same set of brackets a week later and say to myself “Why the hell haven’t I processed this yet?!?!” Well, I’ve been doing that a lot lately, especially after my recent upgrade to Photomatix. I’ve been going back to shots that I wasn’t crazy about the result out of HDR Efex that I now love out of Photomatix. So because of this I’ve been all over the place lately. Which I am fine with. Gives you a bit of variety.
This first shot (and today’s official post) is the view of one of the, um, one of the, uhh, I have no idea really. Maybe it’s one of the actual furnaces? All I know it is looked pretty cool in person and even cooler in HDR. Mike, aka Theaterwiz posted this same view a few weeks ago, check out his work if you have a chance, you won’t be disappointed. One of the coolest things about Carrie Furnace was all the graffiti. If really cut through all the rust and stuck out like a sore thumb, adding some pop to every scene. The processing was fairly straightforward on this one. It is a seven exposure HDR processed with Photomatix and given a Tonal Contrast filter in Color Efex. I like processing scenes like this sometimes because you don’t have to worry about dust spot removal, halos, etc; you can be a bit more over the top with it.
I wanted to share a bit of a different view as well, just slightly to the left of the first shot. I decided to go B&W for this one, and I even mulled over the selective coloring. I sometimes have a tendency to overdo that effect, so after processing it with HDR Efex I gave it a run through Silver Efex to see how it would turn out and ended up being pretty happy with the result. Maybe I’ll start doing a bit more in B&W.
Ahh, Thursday. Hope you all enjoy yours.
Shallow steps
This morning I added another piece to my photo editing arsenal which already includes Color Efex, Silver Efex, HDR Efex, Photomatix, Photoshop CS4 and CS5 and now…the onOne Photo Suite. I’m pretty excited, especially because yesterday morning I had never even heard of the software, downloaded it last night and get the license before the sales expired. Definitely worth picking up, as you can save over $150 right now. Sale said it ended yesterday, but it’s still on their website this morning.
Onto to today’s shot. I just have one upload today, but I wanted to thank all of you who visited my Seas of gold post yesterday. I think that I am going to be in the market for a fisheye lens soon, as I really liked the way that the Heinz Field panorama turned out. I may rent one first, just to make sure that I like it. And so I have something to pass the time before mine gets here.
This is a shot that I took a few weeks ago while moseying through downtown on one of the first nice days we’ve had in Pittsburgh this spring. In the Steel City, we don’t have a subway, but we do have a trolley. It’s a bit limited on where you can take it to and from, unless you live in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, which I do. If that’s the case, then you are good to go. There are about four stops within a mile of my house, the T (as it is affectionately known) will take you to Station Square or one of four other locations downtown. This shot is of one of those stops, well, at least the steps down to one of the stops.
One thing that I like about the 16-35 lens is the slight distortion you get at the wide end, which you can clearly see here on the first few steps. Also, for just being an f4 lens, the depth of field and bokeh can be quite good as well. When I got my D700 I tossed around the idea of getting the 14-24, which I may end up eventually getting, but I didn’t like the idea of having to lug around a camera that had the lens hood permanently attached. I know, I know, a fisheye has one attached as well, but the 14-24 is a bit of a monster.
Anyways, this is a five exposure HDR processed with Photomatix. Just did some slight curves adjustments and added a little vignette to bring the focus to the center of the image.
Catch everyone tomorrow, and thanks for the visits.
Shining and bright
As well all probably know by now, the world got a little brighter yesterday, as US forces finally were able to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden. I don’t need to say very much else about it, because we all know what a great day this is, and, as President Barack Obama put it, “welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity”.
In the spirit of the happiness that hundreds of millions of people around the world are feeling, I thought that I would continue the theme with a bright and colorful shot. Flowers aren’t usually my thing, but as I was walking around downtown a few weeks ago, camera in hand, on one of the few nice days we’ve had recently, I saw this tree that was flowering right near the USX Tower. The late afternoon light was hitting it just right, so I composed the sun just out of the scene and fired off the shot. The reason that I didn’t do a sunflare on this HDR is that I wanted to get some nice bokeh, and had I included the sunflares in the image, I would have had to use an aperture of f14 or higher, which would have destroyed my depth of field. I’m a huge fan of what the wide angle 16-35 f4 lens does in scenes like this, the object is close to the camera.
For the processing on this one, I took the middle exposure and tonemapped it in Photomatix 4. Even HDR Efex couldn’t handle the alignment on this one, as the wind was blowing the branches all over the place. After applying my usual HDR settings, I masked in the entire sky of the -2 exposure, as it was a bit blown out on the 0 EV shot. I selected the sky using the “Color Range” option, which allows me to just select a certain range of colors, making it much easing to just mask in the sky. I also applied both a Tonal Contrast filter (very slight) and Pro Contrast filter to give the image that final pop.
That’s all for my post today. I spent Saturday at Heinz Field, so I have a few shots from there I will be posting this week.
USA. USA. USA.
HDR Exposed 