Illuminating

Thank you to everyone who visited my blog yesterday, I had over triple of my average views for the year.  Not exactly sure how this stuff happens sometimes, but I am glad it does.

On to today’s shot.  I took this one a few weeks ago on a little stroll through downtown Pittsburgh.  This is the entrance to the Steel Building or USX Tower right near the center of town.  I was walking by a bit before rush hour and about 45 minutes after I took this shot, the sidewalk in front of the building would have been completely packed with people waiting for rides or buses to come and pick them up.  I really enjoy being downtown at this time of day, because there are so many different sizes and shapes of buildings, that it really filters the light well and you get cool beams coming through like this one.

Usually the camera police come out and tell you that you can’t take pictures in front of the Steel Building (yep, camera, not just tripod, these guys are crazy) and I saw one of the guards eyeing me up, but he was wither too tired to come outside or just didn’t care.  Guess I didn’t look like much of a threat.

Bonus:  Can you spot the guy who just narrowly missed scoring the lead role in “Multiplicity” instead of Michael Keaton?

Pretty standard when it came to processing this one.  Five exposure handheld HDR, processed with Photomatix.  Did a bit of masking to get rid of ghosting from the car on the right and the people in the center (I thought that Multiplicity man was pretty cool).  I had a few slight halos, so I just masked in the -2 exposure for the sky.  Added a red curves adjustment layer to enhance the building and a blue one for the sky.  Also added a Tonal Contrast filter from Color Efex, and a Progressive Sharpening and Firenze filter from onOne PhotoTools, the former to, well, sharpen the image and the later to give the sunlight some more glow.  Slapped on the logo and exported to blog.

Thanks for all the support and visits.  See you tomorrow, which is Friday, which is good.