Tag: NIK HDR Efex Pro

Morning on the Ohio River

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Morning Rower
Morning Rower

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This image was taken this morning from the Big Four Bridge pedestrian ramp looking west toward Louisville. I spotted this rower and thought he made an interesting subject. The reflections on the river surface interested me too and I tried to frame the image in a way that would accentuate them.  I shot this image with my Nikkor 18-200 mm lens and a rented Nikon D90 and am a little concerned with the focus. I dropped this lens a couple of nights ago at the state fair and I’m worried that it may be slightly off in auto focus mode as the image looks a little soft to me. The past week I broke the cable release socket on my own D90 and had to send it in for service. As soon as it is back from the repair shop I think I’ll need to send the lens in for evaluation. I want to put it on my own camera first though to see if the rented camera may be the culprit.

I processed this as a single frame HDR using NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 using the Realistic preset. I dropped a couple of control points in the trees on the left to bring down the exposure there which was a little too wide due to the sunlight on the birch trees and the shadow being cast by the bridge. I them took the image back into Aperture 3 where I applied some noise reduction and adjusted the vibrancy slider before giving it a little sharpening.

Between the Bridges

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Between the Bridges
Between the Bridges

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This shot is a single frame that was first edited in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 to adjust the tone map and tonality. I also added the vignette while in there. I then took the image back to Aperture 3 to sharpen it. I thought the preset added too much noise so I applied the Aperture 3 denoise adjustment and softened it slightly. I also boosted the vibrancy and detail a small amount to make the sky pop.

Water Tower and Distilling Plant

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Water Tower #1

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This is the last set of brackets I was able to shoot when I was on the abandoned distillery this week. Right after these shots were taken the caretaker arrived and asked me to leave.

I shot four exposures of this scene and then merged them in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. I’ve discovered that using the anti-ghosting at 100% is not necessary and can even cause serious halo issues with bright area such as the sky. I dialed it down to 20% and the results are much better. I really don’t have a lot more to say about this 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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1956 Chevy

Posted on by Nick Roberts
1956 Chevy
1956 Chevy

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I had a tough time shooting this year at the Streetrod Nationals due to the weather and time constraints of my own. The opening morning there wasn’t a cloud in the sky so the light was very harsh which as most photographers know makes things difficult. The second morning it was raining almost the entire time I was there which left me pretty much consigned to shooting closeups and detail shots with waterdrops on everything. I threw in the towel by noon and wrote off the event for this year.

I di manage to get a few images that I liked and this is one of them. One of the toughest factors I face when photographing at this event is what I refer to as the “visual pollution” that is created with all the tents and popups that the participants erect. Due to the tents and the folding chairs that are everywhere; it is nearly impossible to isolate the cars from the clutter. Another problem arises when the owner decides to open the hood on the car to show the engine; this act usually destroys any hope of getting a decent shot of the car no matter how interesting the car is.

Today’s image is from the first morning I was there and even though the whole car was incredibly well done, the place where it was parked was so cluttered with tents and the attendent items such as BBQ grills, lawn chairs, coolers and stacks of “stuff” I could not cet a clean shot of the whole car. I opted to shoot the front end and framed it as well as I could to remove those distractions. I shot a five exposure bracket set that I then edited in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and Aperture 3 to produce this image.