Brian Moran HDR Photography

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Green Fountain

Today's photo is another shot that I took just prior to St. Patrick's Day when the river was dyed green. This shot is of one of the decorative fountains along the Riverwalk that caught my eye because of the green water that was cascading through it. There was not much light as the fountain is located under a bridge, so the time lapse that was necessary to take the bracketed shots ended up smoothing the water very nicely.

Green Fountain

If you are so inclined, please feel free to leave any comments or feedback. Also remember that clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. If you enjoyed this post, please take the time to pass my post(s) on to others whom you also feel would enjoy my work. Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Daytime Skyline

Today's photo is a daytime shot that I took at the beginning of March of the San Antonio skyline as viewed from the parking garage stairwell behind the Casa Rio Restaurant. The shot was taken on a partly cloudy day shortly before sunset so the sky looks a little more ominous than it really was. I really wanted to get a trolley in the shot and fortunately I only had to wait a few minutes before one of the trolleys was caught waiting for the light. I have posted several shots from this vantage point that were taken at night, but I believe this is the first one that I have posted that was actually taken during the day. Which one do you like more?

Daytime Skyline

Monday, April 4, 2011

Looking Through The Branches

Today's photo is another shot that I took while photographing the exterior of the Trinity Baptist Church. I came upon this view while trying to determine the best location to photograph the church, which I ultimately determined was the angle that I shot the photos in yesterday's post. I tried my best to time the brackets so the shot would be minimally affected by the light breeze that was blowing and I think that I got pretty lucky in my timing.

I added a touch of vignetting and some extra desaturation to the edges of the photo to help draw the focus more to the center of the shot. The branches and bushes did an excellent job framing the shot, but I wanted the focus to be the church, not the vegetation surrounding the church. I also did not take the step of "bleaching" the white columns like I did in yesterday's shot because it made this shot a look to unrealistic for my liking, so I kept the slightly "dirty" look to the columns which I think actually helps maintain the overall balance of the shot.

I also debated cropping the photo to make the steeple the center of the shot, but I felt it was best to have the steeple appear off-center, as the square white column on the left and the last round white column on the white are about 1/3 from the left and 1/3 from the right, respectively. This in a sense centers the visible portion of the shot and I like that look compared to selectively centering a portion of the church (in this case, the steeple).

Looking Through The Branches

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Trinity Baptist Church

The subject of today's post is the Trinity Baptist Church, located at 319 E. Mulberry Ave in San Antonio, Texas. I was not aware of this church until last night when a couple from the church stopped by the First Friday showing. That is truly one of the things that I enjoy most about meeting and talking with people who recognize my work, it usually ends up leading to locations that I had not previously thought of shooting (like Judson's Candy Factory). The prominent steeple and marble columns make this by far the most unique church exterior that I have shot to date and hopefully I will be able to able to take shots from the interior in the near future. It reminds me of a building that you would see in Washington D.C. or somewhere on the East Coast, not here in San Antonio.

Processing the shot turned out to be a little bit of a challenge, as I had to get very close and use the 10-22mm wide angle lens to capture the portion of the building that I wanted while ensuring that the view was not impeded by the power lines that ran along the sidewalk in front of the church. I was fortunate enough to think about the building leaning while I was shooting so I made sure to get the widest possible shot because I knew with processing some of the shot would be discarded due to the needed distortion correction. I used the DxO Optics Pro 6 software to ensure that the building appeared upright and vertical, rather than leaning backward. In order to do this I lost some of the foreground at the bottom of the shot, some of the sky, and some of the sides of the building, but since I had accounted for it while shooting I was able to retain the full steeple and marble columns, but not retaining much else from the shot.

I included the "original" version of the shot as well to show just how amazing of a tool DxO Optics Pro 6 really is! (If you are not using this tool to counteract barrel distortion you should be!!) Once again I was impressed with the black and white version of the shot that I use to help make the coloring appear more natural, so I included the black and white version of the final shot as well! One more note about the original compared to the final versions, I ended up cleaning the white of the shot quite considerably, so the columns and steeple look much "cleaner" than the original version.

Trinity Baptist Church - exterior

Black and White - Trinity Baptist Church - exterior

Original (pre-distortion processing)

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Reprocessed Parking Garage Skyline

First of all I would like to thank everyone that came by to visit the First Friday display on Thursday and Friday. It was great to meet so many people and I am truly flattered by all of the kind comments and remarks that were made about the photos that I was showing. And of course the biggest thank you goes out to Juan for letting me show at his loft during First Friday!

Today's post consists of reprocessing one of the most popular shots that I have ever taken from the parking garage behind Casa Rio on the Riverwalk (in fact, the photo won first prize in a contest held by Penn Camera in November!). I decided to re-process the shot because there were some elements that I though I could improve on by working on the photo again, primarily retaining more detail and making the colors appear more natural. In order to retain the detail I used the technique of "area noise reduction" (which I first learned of from Scott Frederick) which allows me to make the sky smoother while retaining details on the buildings (which also helps focus more on the buildings and less on the sky!).

The coloring I was able to enhance using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 by creating a black and white layer of the shot, then blending it with the finished product to make the color appear more natural and less eye-popping.

I actually ended up liking the black and white version so much that I also saved it out and posted that photo as well. I am very satisfied with all of the tools from Nik Software, but I do not think any of them has enhanced my work more than Silver Efex 2 (and the original Silver Efex as well!).

Reprocessed Parking Garage Skyline