Not exactly a model town

In the continuing adventures of tilt-shift photography, I took a stab at shooting from the 7th floor balcony of One Waterfront Place.  The subject matter and the technique are both in need of improvement:

At least this looks like a tilt-shift image.

Meh.

Morning Buzz

I'm still experimenting with the Lensbaby Composer.  The Lensbaby web site has macro converters available, but I discovered that Canon's EF25 extension tube works quite well.  Here's an unadjusted picture of  Buzz Lightyear taken through the extension tube:

I had to take the tube off to get more Buzz in the picture:

Lensbaby Part 2

Took my lunchtime walk along the rail trail with Lensbaby in hand.  It isn't the nicest of days for outdoor photography, and I don't have anything notable to show for the effort.  So with that caveat, here's my nicest shot.

This is looking up Decker's Creek under the bridge on University Avenue, near the Waterfront Park.  I took it from the railroad bridge of the rail trail.

Lensbaby

Got a new toy to play with.  It's a  commercial tilt-shift lens called a Lensbaby Composer.  This particular model has been discontinued in the U.S., being replaced by the much more expensive Composer Pro.

I'm quite happy with the plain old Composer, thank you.  I think it's more than adequate for my needs and ability.  It comes with an assortment of apertures that you drop into place on top of the lens.  They are held in place magnetically.  The wider the aperture, the more pronounced the blur.

You shoot this thing in aperture priority mode, and the camera more or less sets the speed to 1/60 sec.  Here's a sample shot at f 2.8, using the built-in flash.

A Grand View

Yesterday, while waiting to have new tires put on my car at Sam's Club, I shot this view of Evansdale Campus from behind Wally World at the University Town Center.

It's amazing how many buildings you can see clearly from that vantage point.

Back to Dents Run

Took the long way home from the University Town Center this afternoon.  Went up and over Chaplin Hill and stopped for a few minutes at Dents Run covered bridge.

Once again, I took groups of three bracketed exposures a full stop apart and processed them into HDR images.

I managed to hide my car behind the right wall in this second shot.

This is the same hill behind the bridge that I shot early this year.

An Overlook(ed) Photo

While eating breakfast this morning, I looked over the bunch of pictures that I shot at Coopers Rock on Sunday.  One that I had previously overlooked seemed promising.

I had framed a picture of the view from behind the overlook.  Shooting from a tripod I got off three shots at 1/200, 1/400, and 1/800 second at an f/3.2 aperture.   These were processed by NIK's HDR Efex Pro 2, using the "deep" preset.  Added a little bit more processing with ColorFX Pro 2.

Can't find much to complain about with this shot.  This has perhaps the best foliage colors of the Coopers Rock shots that I had taken.  The composition is nice, with the fir tree in the foreground providing a crisp framing effect.  Lines from the overlook walkway form a small triangle at the bottom.  A beautiful blue sky with puffy clouds is not too overdone by the HDR effect.  You can hardly see the sightseers on the overlook.

That'll do, pig.