Tag: Nikon D90

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.

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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Exploring an Abandoned Distillery (Part 4)

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Temple of the Whiskey Spirits #3
Temple of the Whiskey Spirits #3

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I thought I would end the week with a couple more shots of the distillery I was exploring. This first image was processed in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 using the Realistic 2 setting from a five shot bracket set. After merging the five shots and adjusting the Tone-Mapping and Tonality sliders I returned the image to Aperture 3 for some minor straightening and cropping as well as sharpening it for output.

I cropped into the image slightly to make the column on the right a stronger foreground element and to direct the eye into the frame. The repitition of the columns unifies the scene and also creates movement within the frame.

I decided to do a Black and White version as well which is the image below. I used NIK Silver Efex Pro to convert the photo to B&W and applied an orange filter to punch up the contrast slightly. I chose the Kodak Panatomic X ISO 32 film setting to get the dramatic blacks that I used to get from the same film in the darkroom.

Temple of the Whiskey Spirits #3 (B&W Version)

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Exploring an Abandoned Distillery (Part 2)

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Temple of the Whiskey Spirits #2

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This image is another from my exploration of the abandoned distillery I talked about yesterday. I am very curious about the purpose of this structure and will probably go back there soon to further explore the site to see if I can figure out it’s purpose.

This is a bracket set of +2, +1, 0, -1, -2, that I merged in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and then used the Deep preset as my starting point before adjusting the black and the white points, the contrast and the structure sliders. I then took it back into Aperture 3 where I boosted the vibrancy and details slightly before adding a vignette and some sharpening.