Tag: architecture

Waterfront Park View #2

Posted on by Nick Roberts
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.

Louisville Morning

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Louisville Morning
Louisville Morning

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Last week I decided to shoot a panorama of the Louisville Waterfront Park and the Ohio River from the vantage point of the Big Four Bridge. I set my tripod up and shot nine frames in a 180 degree arc from left to right. I wanted to capture the soft pinks and blues of the sky and the reflection of the Kennedy Bridge in the water. As an added benefit of this panoramic shooting technique the bridge is shown from two different viewpoints. I especially like the altered perspective that occurred with the left and right sides of the image where the Big Four Bridge is shown from different angles.

I merged the nine frames in Photoshop CS5 using the Automate/Photo Merge command. After merging the images I flattened it and cropped the edges slightly. I then returned it to Aperture 3 where I lightly adjusted the exposure and very slightly increased the vibrancy and definition sliders. I then applied a little sharpening before saving it for the web.

 

Louisville Skyline

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Spring Skyline

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This image is the Louisville skyline viewed from the Indiana shore of the Ohio River. The bridge is the Clark Memorial Bridge which carries US 31 across the river. I shot this image early this past spring and processed it in NIK HDR Efex Pro and Aperture 3.

A Postcard From Louisville

Posted on by Nick Roberts
A Postcard From Louisville
A Postcard From Louisville

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I took this photo this morning from the Big Four Bridge looking southwest into Louisville. After cropping and adjusting the image in Aperture 3 I took it into NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 where I applied one of the Realistic presets, Deep 2. I adjusted the tonality as well as the black and white points before applying the Graduated Neutral Density filters. I dropped the sky approximately 1 stop and opened up the lower part of the image approximately 1/3 stop before adding the vignette to the final image.

Back to the Distillery Again

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Horizontal old taylor springhouse_Panorama1_HDR
The Old Spring Revisited

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I got up this morning and all I could think about was going back to the abandoned distillery I found last week. I had some ideas I wanted to try out using my 12-24 mm lens to shoot a panorama of this structure. I think I’m beginning to become obsessed with this place and the other unique buildings on the property but that may be coming to an end. Today I was discovered by one of the caretakers of the property who asked me to leave. Since I was trespassing I didn’t argue with him and to be fair he was very polite about the situation. He explained that a couple of weeks ago some vandals had set a fire in the road outside the property and the owners had instructed him to call the police and have anyone found there arrested. He said he wouldn’t do that today but he did let me know that I had been warned about trespassing and that he might not be so understanding if he found me in there again.

I shot this panorama as a four shot bracket set at five different camera angles horizontally. The 12-24 mm lens has a little too much distortion for this technique so if I ever get back in there again I think I’ll shoot it at 50 mm. I merged the five frames in Photoshop CS5 and then cropped the final image before taking it into NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 for tone mapping. I then took it back into Aperture 3 when I slightly reduced the saturation and boosted the vibrancy and structure before sharpening the final image.

I also rendered a copy in Black and White using an orange filter in aperture 3. Please take the time to comment and let me know which version you like best and why.

Horizontal old taylor springhouse_Panorama1_HDR - B&W Version 2

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