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I have a love affair with Louisville’s Waterfront Park and the views of the city I see from the Big Four Bridge ramp. I have been photographing Waterfront Park for several years and I still find myself amazed at the beauty of the park’s design. I consult the NOAA National Weather Service Weather Forecast website for the cloud map of the Midwest on a daily basis watching for what may be dramatic skies at sunset over Louisville. By consulting the cloud map and checking the Weather Channel app on my phone I have become fairly accurate in predicting whether or not there will be clouds on the horizon at sunset. Whenever the conditions seem favorable I head down to Waterfront Park to look for ways to photograph the city and the waterfront that incorporate the sky and clouds. I have always been attracted to bold colors and try to incorporate that into my work. I like the broad dynamic range that sunset and twilight afford me for HDR images that are full of color and texture.
This HDR sunset is from the same shoot as yesterday’s image. It too is a panorama composed from three separate HDR images that were later merged in Photoshop CS5. I first took each frame’s bracket set into NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 where I merged them using the Balanced preset I then set the Detail slider to Accentuated and the Drama slider to Deep. After the three HDR images were created I opened them in Photoshop CS5 and used the Automate command to merge them into one single image. I then returned the resulting image to Aperture 3 where I made my final adjustments to Contrast, Mid-contrast, Color Channels, Sharpening and added a slight Vignette.
Excellent shot! Loved the bridge series!
Thanks K. Stay tuned there’s much more coming about the bridge project Weather has been a little rough lately so work has been delayed.
if you didn’t already live there it sure would make you consider a move. You sure have captured some wonderful beginnings and endings to a day in Louisville, Nick.
Thanks so much Kent that is very nice to hear.
The colour, cloud texture and zig zag all comes together. Nice shot.