Enola Gay

Today's photo is one of many that I took at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, near Dulles International Airport. The photo looks a bit different because I encountered a "problem" with the shot that I was not able to fix. The windows and bright outdoor lights in the shot were over saturating the top portion of the photo, and I did not have any fast exposures to merge them with. I really wanted to post this shot because I think it does a pretty good job showing just how many aircraft are on display, but it also seemed to capture the Enola Gay at the center point of the photo too.

I tried a program from Alien Skin Software called Bokeh 2 to get this effect. You can do several modifications and tweaks with the software, it seems like it is a pretty comprehensive tool. With more blurring and contrast I probably could have simulated a tilt-shift lens more and ended up with a miniature looking shot, but I just wanted it blurred enough to cover up the "bad" portion of the photo. I am pretty pleased with the result, and might consider adding Bokeh 2 to my collection of software.

As always, feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember that clicking on the image takes you to my online gallery hosted at smugmug, in which you can view this (and all of my photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Enola Gay (tweaked using Bokeh 2)