Tag: reflections

Across the River

Kennedy Bridge Sunset

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This image was captured from the Jeffersonville, Indiana shore of the Ohio River looking west toward Louisville. It was a great evening for a sunset and I chose to ride over to Indiana to see what the Louisville skyline would look like.

I processed this single frame in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 to enhance the colors in the sky. After adjusting the tonality to create the feeling I was looking for I returned the image to Aperture 3 for final sharpening and some additional tweaks to the definition, vibrance and recovery sliders as well as performing the final sharpening on the photo. Before sending it to NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 I applied some RAW pre-sharpening in Aperture 3 which I have discovered is a good way to start processing an image.

Waterfront Park View #2

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.

Photowalk Reflection

Aegon Center Reflection

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This photo is another shot from the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk here in Louisville last Saturday. I discovered a view of the Aegon Center building that I had not seen before. I liked the fun house style of distortion that this building’s windows gave to the Aegon Center.

As with the other images this week I only used Aperture 3 for all the post processing of this photo.

 

Four Hundred

Four Hundred

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Last Saturday I joined 25 fellow photographers for Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk. We met at 5th and Muhammad Ali and fanned out from there. I came across this building and really liked the facade. I also liked the reflection of the building across the street in the glass.

I had attended a lecture by Dan Dry earlier last week and after listening to Dan explain what was in his camera bag I thought I would emulate him and restrict myself to one lens. Dan said that his kit consisted of a Nikon D800 and a 24-70 mm lens. Because I use a Nikon D90 which has a crop sensor factor of 1.5; I opted to limit myself to my 18-55 mm which is very close to the one Dan uses; my effective range with this lens is 27-82 mm. It was a different feeling not having my standard walk around lens of 18-200 mm and led me to try a different approach to my photos. I am continuing this exercise for the next few days to see how it affects my image making. I processed this image with Aperture 3 and did not use any other software to finish it.

I also did a Black and White version using Aperture 3 to see how that affected the image. I started with the red filter preset and then tweaked the color sliders to get the image you see below.

400

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Louisville Morning

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.