This is the entry to the Pennsylvanian building in downtown Pittsburgh. This building was originally a train and bus station. Today it is a event venue, office building and has apartments inside it.
Mr. Rogers
Short post tonight. Here is the back of the Mr. Rogers statue which faces downtown Pittsburgh…..
Fall On The Trail
MJ and I went for a little hike on the Montour Trail in Washington County last weekend. I dragged my camera along, because if I didn’t there would have been an amazing shot to take without a camera. So, I carried it the entire walk and took a grand total of one photo and here it is…….
To view a larger version, click HERE
Pittsburgh Classic
Here is another classic Pittsburgh location. This is the Pennsylvania Building in downtown Pittsburgh. Water puddles are great things!! Do you agree?
To view a larger version, click HERE
Pennsylvanian Ceiling
I hope you’re having a great weekend. I can’t believe Saturday is already over…how did that happen. Oh yeah, I spent it organizing camera gear and cleaning up my camera room (MJ calls it my Junk Room).
Today’s post is the beautiful ceiling at the Pennsylvanian building in downtown Pittsburgh. This building was originally a train/bus station. They use it now as an apartment building and event center.
To view a larger version, click HERE
Arches
Blair and I went to this spot after listening to a presentation by Trey Ratcliff a few months ago. I posted a photo of this building back then, but sort of forgot about the rest of them until tonight. So, now you get another (belated) Pennsylvanian building photo. I love this part of this building. Anyone know what this architectural feature is called?
To view a larger version, click HERE
Pennsylvanian
Blair and I got a chance to meet the world-famous photographer Trey Ratcliff last night. We spent a couple of hours with him and 11 others talking photography, travel, fun and life. Afterwards, Blair and I went over to the Pennsylvanian to capture a bunch of photos like this. This current apartment building, former train station, is very unique. The building security usually run photographers off, but last night we had free access to capture all the photos we wanted. I’ve seen lots of photos of this building before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it captured like this….. I hope you like it.
To view a larger version, click HERE
Downtown's Backside
Happy Sunday, where ever you are today. I’m going to be lazy. I planned on doing a bunch of yard work, except its been raining at my house. So I’ll pivot to a more relaxing agenda. Today’s photo is one I took on a past photo walk with Dave, and Brad from the back side of downtown Pittsburgh. Most view and photograph Pittsburgh from the river side, which is the iconic view you always see. This is why I think this perspective is so unique.
To view a larger version, click HERE
Don’t forget to check out my photo galleries. I update and add to them often.
Pennsylvanian Ball Room
This building is usually very restrictive when it comes to photographers. But a few weeks back, the “Open Doors Pittsburgh” event allowed the public to have access to buildings that are normally off limits. So I took advantage of that situation and captured some great photos all over downtown Pittsburgh.
This building used to be the train and bus station back in the day. Today is has a number of executive apartments inside it and some of the larger common spaces are used as event locations. So this former bus/train terminal is now a wedding reception venue. I love it.
To purchase a print or view the entire gallery, click the photo above.
Common HDR Photography Questions (Part 3) - Pennsylvanian Again (picture below)
Ok, here is the long awaited (by no one probably but me) final installment of the Common HDR Photography Questions Part 3 segment. I have already posted the answers to the first two questions:
* Why do I like HDR Photography?
* What is HDR Photography?
So it is now time for the last remaining question: How is an HDR Photograph created?
This is a difficult question only because it can get very technical quick and there are lots of HDR tutorials on line by about a thousand sources. My good friend Brad Truxell has a good one at his site http://www.somethinghdr.com/hdr-tutorial/. I don’t think you want me to repeat those and I really don’t want to do that either. That being the case, I think I’ll be fairly general and give you an overview of the process and not the technical steps (which would be boring). Let’s begin:
1. Find a subject you think will make a great photo (a person, subject, landscape, building, etc…). Whatever you like, but it should be a stable, non-moving object.
2. Set your camera up on a tripod (you can try getting HDR images without, but it won’t turn out very good).
3. Take your images (remember you’ll be taking multiple images of the same subject at different exposures) in Aperture mode at whatever f-stop is appropriate for your subject / environment. You can take the photos in manual mode, but there is no reason to do so.
4. If your camera has it, shoot a bracketed set of images. My camera allows me to pick brackets in sets of 3, 5, 7, or 9 images. This is important and I explained why in Part 2 earlier in my blog. If your camera doesn’t do bracketed photos, you can change the setting manually, but it won’t be as easy. I select fewer numbers of bracketed images in good lighting and more in harder (harsh) lighting environments.
5. Download all the RAW (JPG images don’t work as well) images onto your computer.
6. Open the bracketed image sets in Photomatix Pro to create your HDR Tonemapped photo. There are other software packages to make HDR images that you can also use. I just happen to use Photomatix Pro. In Photomatix Pro, there are all kinds of settings, presets, filters, etc…. Again there are a ton of tutorials you can read or watch on line if you want this level of detail. But that can be boring stuff, unless you are actually trying to do this. If you want that level of detail, we can talk specifics one on one.
7. Once the HDR Tonemapped image is done, I save it to my desktop.
8. You could stop here if you wanted, but I usually open the new image in Photoshop CS6 along with all the original RAW source pictures I got when I took the bracketed pictures.
9. I stack them all and pick portions of some to “Layer” into my HDR tonomapped picture. This just allows me to pick the best areas of these photos and merge them into my final product.
10. After the Layering process, I’ll sometimes adjust the color, contrast, crop, etc… just a little. I don’t go over board with the processing. My final step is to improve the image quality by reducing image noise and increasing sharpness.
11. Then re-save the image and enjoy it.
I’ve tried to keep this simple and short. There are a bunch of steps, keystrokes, and little tricks, but as I’ve mentioned you can get all that from YouTube.com and many other sites. I usually spend about 20 to 30 minutes processing each photo using the general process above. It is a major time commitment that isn’t for everyone. But I love how the pictures turn out at the end and am willing to spend my time doing it. I hope this is somewhat helpful in explaining How an HDR Photograph is created.
Remember to you can see Part 1 and Part 2 of this series by scrolling down the blog to those post.
Tonight’s Picture is of the Pennsylvania Building:
I posted another picture of this great building on December 18th. In that post, I covered the history of this building and what it is used for today. This is the vehicle drop off area at the front door. Can you imagine this being the front door to your home???? What can I say, they just don’t make buildings like they used to. Great facility with a great history.
Teaser (upcoming topics/photos):
I have a few great photos from that mini-trip to share with you.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Visitor Update - Pennsylvanian Building
The Pennsylvania Building was built in 1900 as the Pennsylvania Union Station Depot with 10,000 passengers per day passing through the station. Today it is an elegant apartment building with office spaces, spa, beauty shop, and other businesses. I haven’t been on the inside of this beautiful facility, but I can tell you it is amazing from the outside….as I think you can see. This HDR picture was taken about two weeks ago at around 8pm. Photo’s specs:
Nikon D800
7 Exposure brackets (0, +3, -3)
14-24mm 2.8f lens
Long exposures…some as long as 20 seconds.
HDR image created in Photomatix Pro and tweaked in Photoshop CS6
Visitors: MJ and I had a nice (sort of surprise) visit with Rodney and Angel M. last Saturday. They were going to be driving from Michigan to Virginia to pick up their son. They didn’t know if they would stop to see us and we were going to play it by ear because they were not sure of their schedule. In the end, they stopped by and we had a great visit catching up on family, travel, old friends and camera talk. We really enjoyed the visit and I appreciate the fact they drove out of their way to see us.
Pennsylvanian Building