Tag: tone mapping

Louisville’s New Downtown Bridge

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Waterfront Park during the Downtown Bridge construction, June 27, 2013
Waterfront Park during the Downtown Bridge construction, June 27, 2013

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Work has begun on the Downtown Bridge carrying I-65 across the Ohio River from Louisville. The impact on Waterfront Park should be minimal because the Waterfront Development Corporation had the foresight to prepare a place for it to cross the park. The Waterfront Development Corporation made sure to keep any major component of the park out of this area in an effort to accomodate the bridge and still have a world class park along the Louisville waterfront. This type of forward thinking is the hallmark of the Waterfront Development Corporation which has returned the waterfront to the citizens of Louisville as the “Commons” that the city’s founders envisioned.

As with the Big Four Bridge project I am excited to see and photograph the changing face of Louisville as it continues it’s march into the future. Over the course of the next two years I will be following the construction and the people making it happen. After shooting the Big Four Project I have discovered how much I enjoy construction projects and will certainly be following this latest engineering feat as the work progresses.

I shot this image in the part of the day that most photography “experts” would say to put the camera away. The conventional thinking is that midday light is too harsh and the only time to shoot landscapes is during the “golden hours” or the “blue hours”. I don’t think that is necessary and subscribe to the belief that even when the sun is high in the sky there are plenty of good photo opportunities if one will only open one’s eyes and mind to the possibilities. This particular day the sky was full of interesting cloud formations as a low pressure front was pushing in from the south and colliding with a high pressure front from the north. Had the sky been empty I might have chosen another framing to show the park and construction project.

The image was created from a three frame bracket set using +2, 0 and -2 EV. I first took all three RAW images into NIK Sharpener Pro where I applied some initial sharpening. I then merged the three shots in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and applied the Deep 2 preset before returning the merged image to Aperture 3 where I applied several adjustments to saturation and luminance in an effort to tone down the colors slightly. I then straightened and cropped the image and applied the final sharpening.

A Path Through The Woods

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Enchanted Wood
Enchanted Wood

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Today I am sharing an HDR image that has been processed with Aperture  3, NIK HDR Efex Pro 2, Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop CS5, Topaz Clarity and OnOne Perfect Effects. I shot the scene along Floyds Fork in the new Parklands Park that is being developed in eastern Louisville. My bracket set was -2, 0 and +2 EV which gave me three versions to work with for my HDR merger and tone mapping.

I first took the three bracket set into NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 where I merged them and applied the Balanced Preset. After that I made some adjustments in Aperture 3 before opening the HDR image in Adobe Camera Raw where I adjusted color saturation and luminance and then saved it in Photoshop CS5 as a tiff file. I then used Topaz Clarity to add micro-contrast and further refine the colors in the image. After returning the image to Aperture 3 I adjusted the sharpening, definition and added a vignette. I then opened the image in OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 7 and used Perfect Effects where I first applied the Vecchio filter at approximately 75% opacity to warm the image even further. Next I added the Holga Filter to another layer in OnOne Perfect Effects before returning the image to Aperture 3 for final sharpening.

Ohio River Sunset

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Ohio River Sunset
Ohio River Sunset

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This is a three exposure HDR using NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 for the merger and tonemapping as well as some exposure and structure adjustment. The three kayaks in the scene are from the middle value exposure which is the default frame for NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 when anti-ghosting is applied; I used a 60% setting which seems to work very well for preventing ghosts when objects in the scene are moving in one direction. The anti-ghosting also worked very well for the women walking along the landing at this 60% setting. After completing my NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 adjustments I returned the image to Aperture 3 where I adjusted the separate color channels to get the image I wanted.

Beautiful May Evening

Posted on by Nick Roberts
May Sunset on the Ohio River
May Sunset on the Ohio River

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This image is from a photo shoot I did last Thursday evening after shooting at the Pegasus Parade earlier in the afternoon. I wasn’t ready to go home yet so we headed down to Waterfront Park to explore it further and capture some images with Derby Festival goers using the park. We walked around the park for a couple of hours and wound up on my favorite place to shoot Waterfront Park from, the Big Four Bridge. I had been up there the prior afternoon and evening to photograph the Great Steamboat Race but I really wasn’t happy with a lot of the landscapes I shot after the race ended. I wanted to capture the dramatic sky that was visible Thursday so we hung out on the bridge waiting for sunset.

I shot my normal three frame bracket set of -2, 0 and +2 EV for this HDR image. Today I made a change in my processing and started my post processing in NIK Sharpener Pro 3. I allowed the program to determine the amount of RAW pre-sharpening to apply and then I opened the sharpened RAW files in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. I merged the three frames in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and kept the anti-ghosting set at 20%. I then applied the Deep #1 preset which I tweaked slightly to improve contrast and accent the highlights and shadows. Once that was finished I returned the HDR image to Aperture 3 where I spent some time adjusting the individual color channels as well as the vibrance and saturation of each one. Finally I applied my sharpening and a very light vignette to the image.

 

Miles Lake Morning / Using Reflections to Add Interest

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Miles Lake Morning #1
Miles Lake Morning #1

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When I went out to the Parklands the other morning I was hoping to get a dramatic sunrise but the eastern sky was empty. I decided to hike along the southern shore of Miles Lake to see if there might be something else in there to photograph. About half way to the end of the lake I looked behind me and saw that there was a weather front moving in from the west. I noticed that the clouds were creating an interesting reflection in the placid surface of the lake so I set up my tripod and shot a three frame bracket at -2, 0, and +2 EV.

Back home in my studio I opened the three images in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 where I merged them and since the morning had been calm I only applied 20% anti-ghosting to the merged files. Once they were merged I applied the Deep #1 preset and made some adjustments to the contrast, white, blacks, shadows and highlights sliders. I then returned the image to Aperture 3 where I adjusted the recovery and vibrance sliders very slightly before sharpening and saving the image.