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Another evening after a thunderstorm moved through Louisville. I composed the image with the trees in silhouette in order to frame the scene and emphasize the sunset and the light on the river. The sky was very dramatic and I enhanced the colors of the sunset to add more drama to the scene. This image was also processed in NIK HDR Efex Pro and finished in Aperture 3.
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Today’s image comes from a shoot I did earlier this year along River Road here in Louisville. I was taken by the way the trees framed the scene of the docks in the Louisville Boat Club Marina and wanted to include them as a foreground element to add interest to the scene.
I’m not really sure which app I used to process this image but I think it was an earlier version of NIK HDR Efex Pro. I finished the edit in Aperture 3 with a little sharpening and some tweaks to the vibrancy slider too.
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This image is another HDR from a bracketed set of exposures. I was looking east from the Big Four Bridge around sunrise last week and found the sky to be very dramatic and foreboding. I really like the view from up on the bridge with the boat club on the left and the ramp up to the bridge on the right. In this composition I wanted to emphasize the many triangles that were formed by the channel on the left, the ramp and parking lot on the right and the clouds as they receded into the distance.
I merged the four exposures, +2, +1, 0, and -1, in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 to begin the tone mapping. I initially used an anti-ghosting setting of 20% but when I viewed the merged image there were several issues with the way the clouds rendered. I returned the merged image to the merge panel and applied 100% anti-ghosting which solved the problem. Normally I try to keep the anti-ghosting setting relatively low to avoid an artificial appearance but I have discovered that dramatic cloud formations really need it boosted to 80% or 100%. I think it has a lot to do with the speed that the clouds are moving, which is usually pretty fast, when they are part of a storm front such as this one.
I then started trying the various NIK HDR EFex Pro 2 realistic presets but did not find one that matched my intent for the final image. As I sorted through the many presets I discovered one named “Sinister” which was very close to what I wanted for the final effect. The only difficulty I encountered when applying the preset was that the foreground and foliage went way too blue and gray to suit me. I then placed a control point in the foliage and increased the exposure slightly. This served to lift the greens in the trees out of the shadows. Using that same control point I then raised the saturation very slightly and adjusted the vibrancy. What I was trying for was to get the scene to appear in the photo as it had appeared to me when I was capturing the bracket set.
The more I use NIK HDR EFex Pro 2 the more ways I find to create images that reflect the image I have in my mind when I trip the shutter. As I have said here in the past, my intent with many of my images is to create something that evokes my feelings for the subject and not necessarily a documentary photograph. I know that some photographers take issue with that line of thinking but as the quote in the masthead of this blog says “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” by Edgar Degas. I hope that my images evoke similar feelings in those who view my art.
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This image is another one from the NuLu Photowalk with Jon Eland last Saturday. I was photographing the facade of the building at Gittings Bedding on Market Street when I noticed this fellow looking out the door. I started photographing him as he stood there for what seemed a very long time watching me. At some point he flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED and I thought he would close the door but instead he continued to watch me. I continued to shoot until he stepped back inside and closed the door.
I processed this image in Topaz Adjust using Spicify as my initial preset. I dialed it down quite a bit in order to preserve a realistic sense to the image while still intensifying the contrast and colors in the photo. The sun was shining directly on the building but through using the detail slider and other adjustments I was able to show the texture of his shirt and the brick on the building.
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There is nothing extraordinary about this image I simply found the reflection of the bridge and the ripples of the rower’s oars very serene. I like the simplicity of the rower and his boat gliding along the river in the early morning light. I was using my 18-200 mm Nikkor lens that I had dropped a few days earlier which accounts for the lack of sharpness in the image. While I normally would reject an image that was as soft as this one I find that I like the impressionistic feel that the softness imparts.
I processed it in Aperture 3 without doing anything else to the image. I have sharpened it slightly which simply accentuated the soft focus. I adjusted the exposure and vibrance before saving it as a jpeg for the web.
