Month: October 2012

Across the River

Kennedy Bridge Sunset

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This image was captured from the Jeffersonville, Indiana shore of the Ohio River looking west toward Louisville. It was a great evening for a sunset and I chose to ride over to Indiana to see what the Louisville skyline would look like.

I processed this single frame in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 to enhance the colors in the sky. After adjusting the tonality to create the feeling I was looking for I returned the image to Aperture 3 for final sharpening and some additional tweaks to the definition, vibrance and recovery sliders as well as performing the final sharpening on the photo. Before sending it to NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 I applied some RAW pre-sharpening in Aperture 3 which I have discovered is a good way to start processing an image.

Waterfront Park View #2

We’ll Be Landing in Louisville

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This is another shot I took from high above the Big Four Bridge last month.  It was early and the sun was just rising when I captured this scene. The airplane in the sky adds interest to an otherwise empty sky. The river is so placid early in the morning almost as if it has been sleeping and is just waking to a new day. Waterfront Park is a treasure that many Louisvillians are unaware of; the park extends east of downtown for several miles and reinvigorates a former blighted area of Louisville. The park sits on land that at one time had nothing but scrap yards, asphalt terminals, barge docks and derelict structures all along the riverfront. The land has been reclaimed and decontaminated over the past twenty five years to create one of the most unique parks in America.

I processed this single frame HDR image in Aperture 3 and NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 to get just the right atmosphere.

Photowalk Reflection

Aegon Center Reflection

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This photo is another shot from the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk here in Louisville last Saturday. I discovered a view of the Aegon Center building that I had not seen before. I liked the fun house style of distortion that this building’s windows gave to the Aegon Center.

As with the other images this week I only used Aperture 3 for all the post processing of this photo.

 

Four Twenty One

Four Twenty One

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This image is another from the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk last Saturday. I found this ornate grill above the door to the old Lincoln Bank and Trust building to be very interesting. I processed this image exclusively in Aperture 3 and did not use any plug-ins.

In the image below I processed the same photo as a Black and White version using the red filter option in Aperture 3 which really brought out the details and contrast.

Four Twenty One #2

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Four Hundred

Four Hundred

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Last Saturday I joined 25 fellow photographers for Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk. We met at 5th and Muhammad Ali and fanned out from there. I came across this building and really liked the facade. I also liked the reflection of the building across the street in the glass.

I had attended a lecture by Dan Dry earlier last week and after listening to Dan explain what was in his camera bag I thought I would emulate him and restrict myself to one lens. Dan said that his kit consisted of a Nikon D800 and a 24-70 mm lens. Because I use a Nikon D90 which has a crop sensor factor of 1.5; I opted to limit myself to my 18-55 mm which is very close to the one Dan uses; my effective range with this lens is 27-82 mm. It was a different feeling not having my standard walk around lens of 18-200 mm and led me to try a different approach to my photos. I am continuing this exercise for the next few days to see how it affects my image making. I processed this image with Aperture 3 and did not use any other software to finish it.

I also did a Black and White version using Aperture 3 to see how that affected the image. I started with the red filter preset and then tweaked the color sliders to get the image you see below.

400

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