PhotoWalkPro

Early this morning my sinuses decided to punish me for visiting a warmer, sunnier spot than they are used to.  In retaliation, I hiked down to the nearest Rite Aid to help launch a little over-the-counter-offensive (Don’t you just hate the fact that you have to buy Sudafed from the pharmacist?).  Anyway, the pharmacy wasn’t open until 9:00 so I did what any good photographer would do, I shot a couple of HDR images of the old abandoned theater next door.  The Village Theater on Orange Blvd. is sort of a landmark here in Coronado, even though it looks as though it hasn’t been open in years.

Be sure to click on the images for a larger view.

I didn’t have a tripod with me so, for the HDR of the ticket booth, I just raised my ISO to 400, set my camera to Aperture Priority, and used high-speed continuous to shoot 5 quick frames at different exposures (1 stop each – 2 under, 2 over, and 1 normal).  The images were downloaded to Lightroom and then exported to Photomatix Pro to create the HDR and do the tonemapping. Once Photomatix had done its thing, I took the image back to Lightroom and did a little finishing work on it to adjust the exposure, color, and a few other minor adjustments.

The shot of the theater marquee was a single image that I processed in Lightroom and then Topaz Adjust using their Lightroom plug-in.  It’s very sweet!

Later in the evening I hooked up with my buddies Mike and KB and headed to the waterfront to take some shots of the San Diego skyline at night.  I shot at 400 ISO and my exposure was 20 seconds at f/22.  I processed the image in Lightroom and then took it into Photoshop for some advanced sharpening.  I really like the boat in the foreground and I’m amazed that it is as sharp as it is because there were boats moving across the bay and there was some wave activity.  There were some strong mercury vapor lights behind me, which is why the boat and dock look so warm in comparison with the rest of the image.

I am hopeful that I will get a chance to do a little more shooting before I head home in a couple of days.  My schedule is pretty full so it will probably be a lot of sunset and night time stuff.

That’s it for now, have a great Wednesday.

Related posts:

1. First Look – HDR PhotoStudio
2. Shooting for Photoshop
3. Shooting Digital IR
4. I Did It In Lightroom
5. Photoshop vs. Photomatix Pro

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 1:48 am and is filed under Travel Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.