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.

Macro Monday

A brief trip up to Coopers Rock on Sunday gave me some macro opportunities.

If there was a do-over on this shot, I'd move that leaf stem away from obscuring the acorn.. I was concentrating on getting a nice shot of the puffballs but didn't appreciate how the acorns added to the composition.

Wintergreen (Gaultheria)

Milkweed seeds.

Woodburn Hall

I snapped this picture of Woodburn Hall yesterday morning (8:15 a.m., as you can see by the clock), while on my way there to do a demo on Office 365.

Sunrise was at 7:34 a.m., so this time is technically within the "golden hour."    You can see the lovely effect that the morning sun has on the clock tower.   I tried to use the sycamore tree to frame the shot, but it fell a bit short of my desire.

See the tower behind and to the left of the clock tower in the above picture?  That was my vantage point several hours later when I took the following shot at 10:50 a.m.

Morning, Morgantown

I was back in the tower of Woodburn Hall this morning.  This time, I came prepared.

This one is an HDR composite of three shots taken at 17 mm focal length.  You're looking up the river (South), towards the Lock & Dam and the Wharf District.

This is another HDR series taken at 55 mm.  Same view.

Obsessive Tweaking

It's hard to leave well enough alone. I couldn't fight the urge to re-work the original image of the Mountain Lair from the previous posting.  All of those vertical and horizontal lines gave way to tell-tale lens distortion. While I addressed some of that previously, I had neglected to notice that Oglebay Hall in the lower left was also showing signs of pillowing.

So, I started all over again.  This latest attempt also adds a variety of adjustments and filters to bring out additional detail.

Still not being able to leave well enough alone, I ran the finished version through a Topaz Simplify (BuzSim) filter.  It's not too bad in its own right:

A nice place to reflect

This is a shot of the WVU Mountain Lair taken from the side.  The reflective glass in the center is showing Stewart Hall, which is behind me.   I love the way that the Lair reflects Stewart Hall in the background, the framing provided by the trees, and the play of vertical and horizontal lines. I just wish it was sharper (shot at 1/30 sec exporsure, hand-held).

Looking Out - part 2

The two views posted previously in Looking Out from the Inside didn't require much post processing.  This one did:

This is another iPad 2 camera shot taken from the tower window in Woodburn Hall.  It's looking out over the lower part of the downtown campus, showing the old field house -- Stansbury Hall -- in the center-right.  There's a nice view of the PRT campus station and tracks heading down to the Walnut Street station.  That's the Westover bridge spanning the middle, with the Morgantown lock & dam just visible at the head of the river.

Looking Out from the Inside

WVU's Woodburn Hall has been the subject for a number of my postings.  This time, I had the pleasure of completely turning around my perspective.  Instead of photographing the outside of the building from different angles, I got the chance to look out from the top of one of its towers.

After taking part of a faculty orientation session to a forthcoming migration to the Office 365 email system, I got an unexpected invitation to see the view from one of the towers.  Naturally, I jumped at the chance, but I just had my iPad 2 with me.  Well, as they say, the best camera is the one that you have with you.

I loaded the JPEG files into PhotoShop and cleaned them up a little bit.  For this shot, I also used a Topaz Labs Detail 2 filter to bring out a bit of the color.  The results are not unpleasant.  That's WVU's Life Sciences Building in the lower left.

Here's a view in the opposite direction, looking out over the rooftop of Martin Hall.