Starry Night

Jupiter shines bright over Hunting Island, SC on Friday night.

Zuccotti Park

This is the park that was overcrowded with protesters from the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.  We got some pizza right across the street and ate it in the park, then rode the subway to Times Square.

Independence

The Independence, from American Cruise Lines, was docked at Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park for a couple of days while we were in Beaufort (bew-foot).

This was a 6 second exposure without a tripod.  It was in the van and I didn't want to walk back to get it.  I balanced my camera on the back of my hand and one of the piers that the chains are hooked to.

Before and After

The owner of sweetrun.blogspot.com had asked me a question about some my pictures.  Such as, what kind of lenses I use and do I use filters.   I listed a couple of my lenses and told her that in my opinion a polarizing filter was essential to a camera kit.  I also said that Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop play a part in the final look of an image and that I would post a before and after of a photo from a previous post.

The top photo is the raw image straight out of the camera.  I developed it in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and sent it to Photoshop for some final touches to get the "after" on the bottom photo.  I know that probably sounds like a lot of work, but it only took me a couple of minutes to get the final look I remembered seeing that evening.

The main things I did to the photo were to add some clarity, sharpening, contrast and saturation and work on the sky exposure a little.  All that took was moving some sliders and working with a brush on the sky 'til I got it to where I wanted it.  Learning to use Lightroom and Photoshop is far harder than actually using them.  Once you have the basics figured out you can really buzz through some photos.

As an aside, the photos in this post were shot in jpeg format and looked like that straight out of the camera.  The camera did the processing for me.  The raw file is like the camera saying, "here's your photo, I'm not going to mess with it.  You can do whatever you want to with it".

Saint Albans / Nitro Bridge

We met with the Safety Supervisor at the Saint Albans / Nitro bridge construction (or should I say reconstruction) site yesterday for a tour and pre-planning session so we could work out what we may need to do if an emergency occurs while they're rebuilding the bridge.

This bridge is also called the Richard J. "Dick" Henderson Bridge.  It crosses the Kanawha river between Saint Albans and Nitro, WV.  The bridge is scheduled to be shut down in the first week of January 2013 and be replaced by a new bridge by the first part of November 2013, hopefully.  The reason I say "hopefully" is because right now my commute to work is about 1.2 miles.  When the bridge closes it's gonna be about 10 to 12 miles, depending on which way I go.  Boooooo!!!!!

New River Fog

I got up early this morning and went to New River to see if I could get a picture of the bridge and some fog.  I think I got it.

Three