Watkins Glen Long Exposure HDR

In the beginning of August, my family took a trip to the Finger Lakes. That included a hike through the Gorge Trail of Watkins Glen State Park. We had taken this trail when our kid was 10 months old, so she was in the Baby Bjorn. I didn't have a nice travel tripod at that time, and had thought about how cool it would be to do some long exposure shots of the waterfalls. I have since obtained the Joby GorillaPod travel tripod for my dSLR, and made sure it was packed. What I didn't take with me on the hike was a polarizer filter, to cut down on the light reflections off of the water, leaves, and rocks. 

My family was constantly waiting for me up ahead, as I was stopping to frame a shot, take a couple exposures, possibly reframe. A lot of the time was me just waiting for people to move out of the shot.

This water fall photograph is composed of three images blended into a High Dynamic Range image. The exposure times were 4 seconds, 8 seconds, and 15 seconds. After the image was combined, I also then create a layer of the 8 second exposure ontop of the HDR image, and erased everything but the waterfall. I wasn't happy with the way the waterfall looked in the HDR image, so the "normal" exposure shot was used. 

Watkins Glenn Waterfall Long Exposure HDR
Canon 5D Mark III, EF 24-105mm f/4, f/16, 4s + 8s + 15s, 320ISO, 105mm

Little Bay Park Wide Angle Wednesday

Canon 5D Mark III, EF 24-105mm f/4, f/8, 1/400sec, 3200ISO, 24mm

Summer evening usually involve a couple trips to watch the sunset from Little Bay Park, a park near the Throgs Neck Bridge in Bayside, Queens. There had been construction on the parking lot near this rock jetty, so now that it is back open, there are a lot of people out on the rocks at night. Some people are out there fishing, some practicing their photography, others on dates, or simple selfie taking time.

Sitting by the dock of the bay

Water Taxi Tiki
Canon 5D Mark III, EF 24-105mm f/4, f/8, 1/640sec, 1250ISO, 105mm

Shooting into the sunset, I captured this last week while working an event on the Hudson River far uptown Manhattan.

Throg's Neck Throwback Thursday

GWB Sunset
Canon 60D, EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6, f/16, 1/200s, 400ISO, 135mm

Just a couple of photographs of the Throg's Neck Bridge, the newest of the East River crossings. Shot from Little Bay Park in Bayside, Queens in June of 2013.

Throg's Neck HDR
Canon 60D, EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6, f/16, 6s, 100ISO, 33mm

Water Taxi

Water Taxi Route
Canon 60D, EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6, f/5, 1/250s, 1600ISO, 42mm

It is Thursday, so time for a Throwback Thursday photo! I took this photograph last November while at work. The sun was setting over New Jersey, painting the sky different reds, ambers, oranges, and purples. The camera still cannot capture the beauty I saw in person, but this shot comes close.

Watery Wide Angle Wednesday

 

Nightfall as viewed from the venue
Canon 60D, Tokina Pro DX-II 11-16mm f/2.8, f/8, 2.5sec, 100ISO, 11mm

I have been photographing a lot of our company events, but have not done much in the way of photographing for my personal work since the new year. The first big snow storm of the year yielded a couple of action shots of my three year old playing in the snow, and I tried to get a couple of photos from one time when I was prepping dinner (the lighting from the kitchen window was too good to pass up).

This past weekend I found myself in Greenpoint, Brooklyn photographing a 40th birthday party. When I scouted out my trip there on the map, I noticed a public park just a block away called WNYC Transmitter Park. As the name says, there used to be a transmitter for WNYC located there, but now it is a park with a pier that takes you out over the East River. I decided that I needed to make time before I left the area and grab some shots for my personal portfolio.

After I was done getting the room shots for the event, I left and made my way to the pier. It was a cold night, though in the high twenties as opposed to the teens as it has been. The wind whipping off of the icy East River did not feel good though, so I stayed out there for maybe 20mins before I decided to pack it up.

Williamsburg Bridge linking BK to Manhattan
Canon 60D, Tokina Pro DX-II 11-16mm f/2.8, f/8, 25sec, 100ISO, 11mm

Post Processing was done by tweaking the RAW files in Adobe Lightroom. I tweaked the white balance towards the cool side because that is the mood I felt these pictures convey to me, but it may be I am still frozen. I usually crop to the original aspect ratio or 16x9, but this time, I decided to do 2x1 aspect ration. These cityscapes just felt very wide to me and 16x9 wasn't wide enough.

Midtown
Canon 60D, Tokina Pro DX-II 11-16mm f/2.8, f/4, 3.2sec, 100ISO, 11mm