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Cranes are the workhorses for Walsh Construction on their Ohio River Bridges Project. In this view from the Indiana landing there are two large cranes on barges in the river and if you look along the horizon you can see at least six more cranes. They are being used to move material and to set the pile drivers in place on the Kentucky side of the river where there are going to be over fifty structures erected in the reconstruction of Louisville’s Spaghetti Junction.
This HDR image is another three frame bracket set +2, 0 and -2 EV at f8. I merged them in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and finished the merged image in Aperture 3. After that I took the HDR image into Photoshop and applied some lens correction as well. I’m starting to limit my use of the structure slider in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 because I think it is introducing graininess into the skies. I still use a little to punch up the details but not nearly as much as I have in the past. When in Aperture 3 I have also limited the use of the details slider for the same reason.
Beautiful picture, but have you tried to shift you on the right to give depth between the bottom of the crane and the bridge right? I do not know the places or opportunities for shooting, so it’s just a question, no one complains.
Thanks for the suggestion Pascal but I couldn’t frame it that way without cluttering up the foreground.
Curious as to why your workflow uses various programs, particularly Photoshop and Aperture 3? Wouldn’t one or the other give you the same control and range for adjustments?
Thanks for asking Lowell. My primary image editing is in Aperture 3 simply because I have been using it since it was first released and I can predict what a particular slider will do. I only use Photoshop when the task is not supported in Aperture 3 such as lens correction or content aware fill. As you can probably see I lean heavily on plug-ins from NIK, OnOne and Topaz; that is because I like the endless possibilities they offer and the ability to quickly move an image into the vision I have for it or simply explore it’s possibilities.
Very good combination of natural and man-made forms, natural curves and straight lines )
Thank you ArtMoscow.
Hi Nick. Lots of good work on your blog. I too use the NIK plugins for much of my work. Regarding the noise introduced with hdr especially in the sky I’ve been using the control points to reduce this by dropping the structure and method and keeping them grouped. Also I may drop the image into Define for further noise reduction. Seems to work for me and I do a lot of “natural looking” hdr.
Those are very good tips John I’ll keep that in mind for future images. Thanks