Old San Juan At Sunset

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been out of touch for the last week.  The reason for my absence was due to a Caribbean cruise with family and friends.  We traveled to San Juan to get on the ship and from there we stopped at Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Thomas, St. Lucia and St. Maarten.  We had a wonderful time, wonderful weather, and I captured some great photos.

Tonight’s photo is from the western end of Old San Juan.  We arrived in San Juan and went straight to our hotel.  After checking in, we took a taxi to my favorite Caribbean city…..Old San Juan.  The architecture, the old Spanish forts, blue cobble stone streets, shops, and history are amazing.  MJ and I had dinner at great local restaurant, walked the city streets and ended our day watching the sunset at the Castillo San Felipe del Morro fort.  The fort construction started in 1539 and took decades to finish. 

Photo Technique:

This is a 5 exposure set (+2, +1, 0, -1, -2) taken in Aperture priority using my Nikon D800 and the Nikon 14-24mm 2.8f lens.  I processed the images in Photomatix Pro and completed some minor edits in Photoshop CS6.

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South Beach Miami - Great Christmas Gift

Christmas Gift

MJ and I didn’t have any family events or dinners at Christmas this year.   So we took a long weekend including Christmas and went to Miami as a small Christmas gift to each other.  It was nice to get away from the cold weather for a few days. 

While we were down there, we visited a bunch of places such as South Beach, Bayside, Bal Harbor, Downtown Miami, North Miami and a 1,000 year old Monastery Cloister.  I got a ton of great pictures at just about every stop. 

Park Central Hotel – Art Deco District

Tonight I thought I would share a picture I took about 30 minutes after sunset of Park Central Hotel on Ocean Drive in South Beach.  This strip of road has all kinds of old cool Art Deco buildings with hotels, bars, shops, etc…  They are interesting looking during the daylight, but at night they turn into super cool neon buildings. 

This area is hopping with traffic (both cars and people) so it is almost impossible to take a picture without the traffic getting in the way.  I thought about aiming the camera up to avoid the traffic, but I wanted to include the 1920’s antique car that sits in front of this hotel (see bottom left).  So I made the best of the situation.  I positioned my camera across the street with a tripod on the sidewalk trying to get as much height as I could.  I did this hoping to shoot the picture over as much traffic as possible.  As you can see, I was shooting over a parked car.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I captured the hotel sign reflection in the roof of the parked car, which added a cool element in the photo. 

Because it was dark, I used a 5 Bracket exposure set (+2, +1, 0, -1, -2) will all of them being fairly long exposures.  This helped get the correct lighting (exposure) and it helped make the moving traffic (people and cars) disappear from the photo.  All you can see from the traffic are the headlights and tail lights from the cars.  You’d never know it from the picture, but the sidewalk in front of the hotel was packed with people walking.  With the long exposures, they disappear making it look like the sidewalk was empty.  You can also see the clouds moving in the photo because of the long exposures.  Anyway, I think there are a bunch of cool effects in this photo and it gives you a nice look at a “HOT” area of Miami.  

I hope you enjoy this pic.

Park Central Hotel in South Beach

Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, etc..

I hope everyone is having a great Christmas, holiday, or whatever you celebrate.  MJ and I gave each other a long weekend away.  We skipped town and went to Miami.  While we were there we went to South Beach, Bal Harbor, Bayside, a Monastery Cloister built in the year 1133 and I went scuba diving.  We have to be the only people who visit a Monastery while on vacation.  I’ll have some pictures from the Miami trip for you soon.  For now, I have a holiday (Christmas) tree picture for you.

This is the Christmas tree in the middle of the ice skating rink at PPG Plaza in downtown Pittsburgh.  I took this in early December, while on a photo walk with Dave and Brad Truxell.  This is a 5 bracket set (+2, +1, 0, -1, -2), processed with Photomatix Pro and edited in Photoshop CS6.  

There are a few other photos from that evening in the Gallery - Pittsburgh Area folder:  http://brook-ward.com/pitt-test/

PPG Plaza

Pennsylvania Holiday Art On Display - Santa Graffiti

Where & Why:

 MJ and I have been in Pennsylvania for over two years now and I drive by an abandoned industrial property from time to time near our home.  I am told it is an old box factory that was operated by a glass company.  Back in the day, along with steel companies there were a large number of glass companies that operated around Washington PA making many different products.  Today both the glass and steel companies are gone.  Most of the old properties have been renovated for other uses or were destroyed to build something else.  But this one large complex remains and I’ve talked about photographing on numerous occasions. 

Well a few weeks ago, MJ and I went on a scouting mission to take a look at the property.  While there we found lots of graffiti, but one individual’s work caught our eye and I went back to capture it for you.  When we returned to photograph the graffiti, we scared off a few guys who appeared to be salvaging metal for recycling.  When we pulled in, they left the site fairly quickly and gave us a good look over.

I hope this photo brings joy to your holiday season regardless to how and what you celebrate. 

Photo Specs:

 This photo was taken with a Nikon D800, 14-24mm f2.8 lens, aperture mode, with bracketing (+1, 0, -1) and a tripod.  I processed the bracketed images using Photomatrix Pro and edited in Photoshop CS6

Happy Holidays.

Santa, Reindeer, & Snowman Graffiti on abandoned factory building