Figured that I would follow up the Pittsburgh skyline yesterday with one more today!  I took this one a few months back during an early morning run with my sister.  We made a stop on Mt. Washington and I took this 7 image panorama just as the sun was coming over the horizon.  What an incredible view it was!  The one thing that you can’t tell from this picture is how freezing it was!  My hands were almost freezing by the time that I finished taking the brackets.

I hope that you all enjoy your weekend!

I feel like most times that I fly, there is something preventing me from getting decent pictures.  The one exception in the past 5 years or so has been on our way home from Jamaica two years back from our honeymoon, but that was a much longer flight.  I always seem to be on the wrong side of the plane, at the wrong time of time to get any decent pictures.  Well, coming back from New York City last month I finally got some good luck!  First off, I managed to get upgraded to first class because a family wanted to sit together.  It being my first time in first class, I was pretty excited.  After enjoying my bourbon on the rocks I tucked my camera beside me, armed with just my 50mm lens.

The first view I was treated with after taking off out of Newark was the New York City skyline.  This is only the second time that I’ve seen it from the plane, so I was happy to finally grab a few shots.  The first one in the post is of midtown Manhattan, with the Empire State Building front and center.  The second one, right above, is towards the lower end of Manhattan, with Freedom Tower, Jersey City and Ellis Island all visible.

After we got to cruising altitude I took a look back at the propellers and noticed the sunset reflecting right small in the middle of it.  You can just see the speck of the sun as it dips ove rthe horizon.

Having a little more room that I normally do on planes, I leaned up to grab a shot of the silhouetted window and sunset as well.

Finally we made it back to Pittsburgh and I got the best shot that I’ve ever taken of the Steel City out of an airplane.  I’ve seen this view plenty of times, but as I am usually coming back at night, I’ve never been able to get a crisp shot.  While this one is still a little blurry, I’m really happy to have captured the view.  Pittsburgh as seen from an airplane is just as awesome as Pittsburgh seen from the ground!

One more look at the city.  To give you some perspective, the Civic Arena demolition, of which I have posted so many shots recently, is taking place on the rand hand side of the screen, where you can see the faint outline of a dark circle.  That’s where the Igloo used to stand.  Just to the left of that is the tallest building in Pittsburgh, the Steel Building, where my last panorama was taken from.

Thanks for stopping by today folks!  See you all tomorrow!

We’ll start with another one from the Top of the Rock.  I know that I’ve posted plenty of these already, but it really is one of the most amazing views in the city!  This was actually the last shot that I took from my visit there.

A shot taken just a few minutes before the first one, as well as a bit more zoomed in.  I love how you can see inside some of the windows!

One of the first shots from my trip to the Top of the Rock.  The Empire State Building just dominates the skyline.

I’ve been to New York City but had never taken a shot of the Atlas statue in Rockefeller Center.

Finally, another one from the gloomy first day I spent in the city, with New York blanketed in clouds.

Thanks for stopping by today everyone!  See you all tomorrow!

Anyways, on to the shots!  The first one above is one of the promos that we did before the show started, sitting at the bar.  Directly above is rhythm guitarist Christian.

Bass player Joe basked in light

Ian, the drummer

Lead singer Dusty

Leader guitarist Mark the Savage on the bar

Dusty and Christian, early in the show

Mark on guitar

Thanks for stopping by today everyone.  See you all tomorrow!

I’m sure that we all a pretty good idea of how our shots will turn out before we even export them from our cameras.  Usually, the final product is probably pretty accurate to what we thought it would be.  Every once in a while though, they can turn out beyond what we thought they would.  This is one of those times.

Last week as you know, I was up in the 58th floor of the Steel Building, the tallest building in downtown Pittsburgh.  It is more or less triangular in nature, and my idea was to take a panorama from each side and combine them for one huge panorama of the Steel City.  Above is the final result.  I will say that I missed one shot, just one shot, to make it a complete 360 degree panorama.  You can actually see the building on the left and right had side of the screen, well, at least the edges.  That is the one shot that I missed, otherwise it would have been a complete 360 degree view of the city.  Needless to say, I am still thrilled with how it turned out!  This is a 12 image panorama, with each image being made up of 5 brackets, for a grand total of 60 images.

Thanks for stopping by today folks, I hope that you all enjoy your weekend!

I was also there at the, the same night that I posted the shots from a few days ago, when it was raining.  I love the way that the Plaza Hotel shimmers as it reflects in the water!

Thanks for stopping by today folks, make sure to stop back tomorro!

For today’s shots we head back to New York City for a little bit of flare!  These are shots that I took a few days apart while in the city a few weeks back and you can see how beautiful the weather was, in stark contrast to the shots that I posted of Central Park last week.  The first image above is from the pier in Hoboken, on my walk to the PATH on Monday morning after the rain.  There was this huge puddle that captured the reflection of the flare perfectly!  I originally had cloned the jogger out of the frame, but ended up putting her bag in, as I thought it added a nice human element to the scene.

The next one is from around Battery Park.  The first thing I’ll say, is that the halos you can see were not present on my screen at home.  Not quite sure what happened, but I’ll fix it later!  Now, I really liked this scene because it had so many different elements in it.  You have an impressive New York building in the background, the cherry blossoms on the tree, the corer food vendor and of course, the sun flare!

A quick word about sun flares.  I currently have a tutorial on them and I’m sure that most people do know how to capture them, but I just thought that I’d give a quick run down for those who don’t.  The best way to capture those distinct sun flares is to go with the smallest aperture (largest f/) that your camera has, which is typically around f/22.  It will also greatly depend on the lens.  For instance, I find that I get more crisp, pointed flares with my 16-35 f4 than I did with the 24-70 f2.8 that I rented for a my trip (and with which both of these were shot with).

Anyways, you have your smallest aperture, you’ve pointed your camera at the sun and you start to shoot your brackets.  Hold one just one second.  One more thing.  I also recommend having your middle exposure be +1 EV.  Since your camera will more than likely take a weighted meter of the scene (unless you change it to spot metering) you will more than likely not have a bright enough highest exposure to capture the details in the shadows.  The sun will be fine, but the darker areas will not be.  I also recommend 7 bracketed shots, not the usual 3 or 5. Now you’re ready to shoot!  After than, just process as normal, and make sure you leave some time to clone out all those dust spots that the small aperture will bring out!

Thanks for stopping by today folks.  See you all tomorrow!

A view of Pittsburgh from the North Shore before the game

The sunset was pretty amazing over Heinz Field

Put on the 70-200 and snapped another one of the light coming through the clouds

At the home plate gate of PNC Park

Pirates star Andrew McCutcheon just gets thrown out at first

Reflections of the game in another fan’s glasses

It got a little cloudy later in the game, but never rained

Pirate’s pitcher James McDonald delivers a pitch to Red’s second baseman Brandon Phillips, which he just missed, as you can see the ball just below the bat

A view from behind home plate

The super moon even made an appearance over the city

Pirate’s closer Joel Hanrahan brings the hammer down once again

Fireworks celebrating the Bucco’s win

Thanks for stopping by today folks!  See you all tomorrow.

Today’s shots are from my Sunday night in New York City, the night that I dealt with a little bit of rain.  My plan was actually to make it to the reservoir in Central Park at night, but I was still about 25 blocks away when the skies opened up.  Since I was missing one crucial piece of equipment for rain photography (an umbrella) I thought it best to turn around.  I did manage to snag this shot before I left the park.  I think that I prefer the B&W one above (processed with Silver Efex 2), but there is something about the color one that catches my eye as well, so I thought that I would share both.

Thanks for swinging by today everyone!  See you all tomorrow.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to make it back up to the 58th floor (4 floors from the top) of the Steel Building in downtown Pittsburgh.  The last time that I was on the roof and shooting towards the Point (pictured above) it was a really overcast day.  Just, however, it was just gorgeous.  I was there for about a half hour and took almost 300 shots, all of them HDRs.  I’ll be working on putting together a panorama as well as some other shots, but I wanted to at least share this a few!  The one below shows all the progress (if you can call it that) on the demolition of the Civic Arena.  When you compare that to some of my earlier shots of it, you can see how quickly it came down!  CONSOL Energy Center is pictured here as well.

These were both shots through a window, so I know that I have some reflections/glares present.  I think that they get hidden nicely in the city however and aren’t that distracting to the image!

I hope that you all have a great weekend!  See you on Monday!