Amusing reflections

I spent yesterday evening an Kennywood Park, an amusement park along the Monongahela River east of Pittsburgh.  We used to go every year with for our school picnic, but it has been over a decade since I last made it over to the park, and although they have added a ride or two since my last visit, most everything else was just how I remembered it, from the smells of fries and cotton candy to the sound of the rickety old wooden roller coasters the Thunderbolt, the Jack Rabbit and the Racer.  This is a little teaser shot of the series I will be posting, as I got home late last night and didn’t have a whole lot of time to process and am leaving for vacation tomorrow (from which I will have another round of HDRs to go through), so it may be a while before I get to them all.

I actually almost missed this shot.  I had gotten most of the ones that I wanted, but decided to swing by this area one last time on the walk out.  Well, I ended up staying for another 45 minutes or so and I’m glad I did.  This is the pond located near the beginning of the Park and hear you can see the Skycoaster (big tall structure on the left, similar to bungie jumping), the Aero 360 behind it (spins you upside down), paddle boats in front, the Racer (wooden roller coaster where the blue and the red cars race, not sure what the stats are on them) and then a building that houses a few game to the right of the Racer.  The water was so calm, giving way to some great reflections.

For the processing on this, I combined seven exposures into an HDR with Photomatix and then did some further edits in Photoshop.  First I tonemapped the +3 exposure so that I could mask in the Aero 360 on the back left of the frame to give it more of a motion blur.  I added a warming layer as well to tone down the overall blue feel of the shot.  Next, I applied a Pro Contrast filter to the entire image and then a Tonal Contrast filter just to the buildings and bushes.  Next, I added Progressive Sharpening to the buildings, and finally a touch of clarity and color boost in onOne PhotoTools.

Plenty more of these to come, so check back soon.  Tomorrow will be my last post for a few days.  I think I may miss it a little bit.