Thunder Over Louisville is the kick off event for the Kentucky Derby Festival and the largest fireworks show in North America. Thunder Over Louisville starts around 3:00 in the afternoon with a large air show and continues until almost 10:00 pm when the last burst of fireworks explodes in the Grand Finale.
Tag: Kentucky Derby Festival
Kentucky Derby Festival 2013 The Great Steamboat Race
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This image is from the Great Steamboat Race here in Louisville, Kentucky. Each year, as part of the Kentucky Derby Festival, Louisville hosts the annual Great Steamboat Race which pits her own steamboat the Belle of Louisville against any other contenders that show up. This year was the first time people could view the race from the Big Four Bridge in Waterfront Park.
This image is a single frame post processed in Aperture 3 without using any plug-ins. I liked the repeating shapes of the boat’s wakes as a reinforcement of the bridge beams and handrail.
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This image received the same post processing as the previous photo. I created a preset Effect in Aperture 3 based on the first image and was able to apply it to many of the images I shot that afternoon. After applying the preset to an image I could go into the adjustment panes and make small tweaks to each image as needed without having to start from scratch.
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I applied the preset to this image as well. It’s a real timesaver to build an Effect Preset in Aperture 3 and then apply and tweak it as needed.
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This last image was also processed in Aperture 3 using the same Effects Preset I created but since it was later in the day I had to go into it and readjust many of the sliders to emphasize the colors of the sky and it’s reflection on the river. Still it was nice to have the preset as a starting point that shared the same overall feel as the earlier images.
Beautiful May Evening
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This image is from a photo shoot I did last Thursday evening after shooting at the Pegasus Parade earlier in the afternoon. I wasn’t ready to go home yet so we headed down to Waterfront Park to explore it further and capture some images with Derby Festival goers using the park. We walked around the park for a couple of hours and wound up on my favorite place to shoot Waterfront Park from, the Big Four Bridge. I had been up there the prior afternoon and evening to photograph the Great Steamboat Race but I really wasn’t happy with a lot of the landscapes I shot after the race ended. I wanted to capture the dramatic sky that was visible Thursday so we hung out on the bridge waiting for sunset.
I shot my normal three frame bracket set of -2, 0 and +2 EV for this HDR image. Today I made a change in my processing and started my post processing in NIK Sharpener Pro 3. I allowed the program to determine the amount of RAW pre-sharpening to apply and then I opened the sharpened RAW files in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. I merged the three frames in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and kept the anti-ghosting set at 20%. I then applied the Deep #1 preset which I tweaked slightly to improve contrast and accent the highlights and shadows. Once that was finished I returned the HDR image to Aperture 3 where I spent some time adjusting the individual color channels as well as the vibrance and saturation of each one. Finally I applied my sharpening and a very light vignette to the image.
Thunder Under The Bridge
This image was taken during Thunder Over Louisville which is billed as one of the largest fireworks displays in America. Thunder Over Louisville occurs every spring as the kickoff event of the Kentucky Derby Festival. For this shot I went under the Clark Memorial Bridge to get a different vantage point from the typical fireworks shot. By including the bridge’s architecture I was able to take a rather mundane subject and give it a sense of scale.
I processed this image in Aperture 3 and Topaz Adjust which really added punch to the texture of the stonework and enhanced the colors in the fireworks. The composition is balanced by the strong diagonal line of the underside of the bridge deck and the curve of the arch on the left which also reinforces the arc of the fireworks as they stream down from the sky.
