Walk this way

Today's photo is a shot of the stone steps that was taken at the Japanese Tea Garden, located in Brackenridge Park, in San Antonio, Texas. I thought that the shot had a chance to look interesting some unique tripod positioning and the fisheye lens. I added some of the soft focus/blurring/color enhancement in post-processing (Nik Color Efex Pro 4. Love that tool!). I think the photo achieves a sort of dreamy "Alice in Wonderland" sort of look to it.

Walk this way

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Riverwalk Christmas Lights II

Today's photo was taken from the opposite side of the Market Street Bridge, looking toward the southern direction of the "tourist" part of the Riverwalk. Once again the wind helped detract from how awful the branches of the trees look without lights, but the thing that I like the most about this shot is the blurred reflection of the lights on the water. I probably will end up posting one more shot from the Christmas lights, then wrap up my time in San Antonio with a series of photos from one of the coolest places that I have ever had the opportunity to shoot!

Riverwalk Christmas Lights II

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!

Through the bars

Today's photo was taken from the historic Frost Motor Bank site in downtown San Antonio. I purposely moved the shot so that one of the bars was blocking the view of a newer building (the Crowne Plaza) so the only structure visible was the Robt. E. Lee Hotel, which apparently have been converted into an apartment building. The Frost Motor Bank site was constructed around the same time, and I think the view looking out between the metal beams is quite interesting.

I actually combined two HDR shots for this photo, the first was focusing solely on the beams, the second shot was the rest of the photo. Because the beams were so close and so dark, a much longer exposure was needed to properly bring out the detail, but in order to capture that, the rest of the shot was entirely blown out. This is a prime example of when you have to think ahead to post processing while you are shooting, otherwise this shot would have likely been completely unusable!

Through the bars

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Riverwalk Christmas Lights

After debating going downtown Friday evening to shoot the new Christmas lights on the Riverwalk in San Antonio (decided against it, fighting the crowds did not seem like a good idea on the first night) a friend and I did a sort of impromptu photo-walk around the "tourist" portion of the Riverwalk last night. It wasn't terribly cold, but toward the end of the night, the wind started to pick up and definitely started to feel much cooler than it was earlier in the night.

This shot was taken on the bridge over the Riverwalk on Market Street. After trying to figure out the "perfect" way to get as much into the shot as possible, finally had an idea, tried it, and this was the result, exactly what I had in my mind framing wise!

The lights are wrapped around the trees this year, rather than hanging from branches in years past, and they are all LED, rather than the bulbs that were used in previous years. The city also finally realized that having every third light be pink or red ended up casting a reddish hue and made the entire light display look red and very unattractive.

The display is definitely much better than last year, but I do not think it is worth of being the "8th best Christmas light display in the country", as a Yahoo! travel article recently suggested. The reason for my feelings on that are:

- many of the downtown structures that had Christmas lighting (the taller Marriott hotel, the Tower Life Building, etc.) ended up turning off their lights around midnight, which doesn't make it very attractive

- the city did not take the time to actually look at views on the Riverwalk of many of the aforementioned structures, they seemed to care more about wrapping seemingly random trees in lights, and did not take in to account what a "scene" could end up looking like

- there are not nearly enough lights. If the amount of trees containing lights was doubled (probably tripled) it would definitely be better. The LEDs are bright, certainly, but this is the only spot on the entire riverwalk where every tree that you can see is covered in lights. One single vantage point, on the entire Riverwalk, does not a high ranking Christmas destination make.

With all of that being said, the display is much, much better than last year, hopefully the city continues to look at and explore options to make it more of a "must-see" Christmas light destination. If they actually end up increasing the amount of trees that are covered, I just might come back in future years to visit. If you live in the area it is definitely worth a trip downtown, but I am sure there are much better places to see closer to home for tourists that would not otherwise travel to the city.

Riverwalk Christmas Lights

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!

Give Me a Break

Today's photo, surprisingly enough, was taken right across the street from the Alamo in downtown San Antonio. I was walking with a friend taking photos downtown and we noticed this alley way, with the table and chairs set up as a sort of impromptu break room. I used some very selective cropping to go from the original shot and wanted to focus more on the tables and chairs, including the chair on top of the palettes at the entrance to the alley. This is yet another example of the superior processing capabilities of Nik Color Efex Pro4, I think I managed to sort of give it an old time, almost "Godfather-esque" feel to the photo. I cannot remember for certain, but I think the building on the right houses the Rainforest Cafe, but it is definitely one of the tacky, touristy type attractions that surround the Alamo.

(PS: Because of the cropping, the photo slightly pushes outside of the "normal" width, your browser is not malfunctioning or anything like that!)

Give Me A Break

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Down and Up

Today's photo title is of particular interest because it actually has a correlation between my day job (digital forensics) and this shot. As you may, or may not, know, the "Down and Up" worm was another name for the "Conficker" worm that rose to prominence back in 2009. An interesting little tidbit of information for you, but I digress....

This shot came about in a completely unexpected manner. I spent a part of the day yesterday walking around downtown San Antonio seeing if I could get a neat skyline shot from an angle that I had not taken a shot from before. Unfortunately, after several attempts scaling shorter parking garages and buildings, I finally found one that I thought would work, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Riverwalk at 111 Pecan Street East. I took the elevator to the 9th floor, and climbed a flight of stairs to reach the top of the garage. Unfortunately, the view was not at all what I was hoping for, and, disappointed, hung my head as I walked back down the steps to the elevator. Just as I was about to reach for the door, I heard something in the stairwell and it caused me to look down the steps, and this scene is what awaited me. Completely unplanned, and what I think is a really incredible shot!

This shot was also the first that I have processed using Nik Color Efex Pro 4, which has even MORE filters than 3, and (in my opinion) improved on what was already the best photo enhancing product on the market. The fine folks over at Nik Software continue to churn out high quality products, and I cannot recommend them enough! They offer 30 day demos of all of their products, and I guarantee once you try it, you are going to want to buy it, their software really is that good!!

Down and Up

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!

Solarized Tunnel

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday!

Today's photo is one of the most heavily "post processed" shots that I have ever taken. As I was working on the shot and some of the filters in Nik Color Efex 3.0 (I upgraded to 4, but have not yet installed it on my Macbook, it is on my desktop, which is currently in transit to Baltimore!), the solarization filter reminded me of the "Light Channels" posts that I did last year. (If you are interested, please feel free to search for "Light Channels" in the search box).

If you have been to the southern portion of the Riverwalk you have probably seen this tunnel, although it looks nothing like the coloring in the photo (I will probably post an original version of this shot in a few days, just to compare the differences). I managed to retain the original coloring of the path (with the original coloring hue removed, as the light reflected the original color onto the path) while adding the "surreal" look to the tunnel itself. I think it is quite eye-catching, however, I would love to know your thoughts on it too (you can leave them in the comments below, send me an email, etc. as I am just looking for feedback on the shot!).

Solarized Tunnel

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Inner Harbor at night

Today's photo is one that I took on Saturday night of the Inner Harbor in downtown Baltimore. I took it from the opposite corner of the last shot that I posted, and used the magic of Photoshop to help take out some elements that I did not like in the shot. I also used the reflection of the sky, flipped it, and tossed in some extra blur to give a better (and less noisy) look to the shot. I need to get a shot around dusk, when the lights in the buildings are on, but there is still enough ambient light that the sky will have a different look to it.

Inner Harbor at night

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Inner Harbor Sunset

Today's photo is a shot from the far end of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland, looking west into the sunset. I had a chance to head out today to take some photos for the first time since arriving up here to work on getting my new place set up. I am very happy with how this shot came out, the sky was mostly cloudy and overcast for a good bit of the day and I was not expecting to see much sun, let alone be able to capture a moderately decent sunset on the water. The main thing that I was looking for in this shot was to capture the buildings downtown, which I was able to do pretty well from the fisheye lens, but I decided to keep portions of the distortion and not fix it completely because I think keeping it in the shot brings out some more aspects (like the rocks on the left and the sunbeams poking through the trees). I am looking forward to moving up here and exploring to see what kind of photos I am going to be able to take up here!

Inner Harbor Sunset

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!