Curving around

So tomorrow I have to send the fisheye back.  It’s a little sad, because I’ve really enjoyed using the lens over the last two weeks.  I just may have to get one for myself here soon.  I do have a birthday coming up in a few months.

Anyways, today we are sticking to the Boardwalk.  On Friday night we made our way to Conner’s Beach Café for dinner and were able to get a seat upstairs.  We weren’t directly on the railing, but since I lugged my camera with me everything over the weekend, I still walked to the edge to get a few shots.  The sky provided some added drama along with all the people scurrying about on the boardwalk, with just a hint of red below the layer of blue sky and puffy clouds.  One thing I really like about the fisheye lens is how it gives you the perfectly straight horizon with the super distorted foreground.  A really interesting effect for sure.

This one was a little bit of pain to process.  It’s a handheld, five exposure HDR processed with Photomatix and CS5.  I first had to tonemap the +2 exposure to mask in the people, but no matter how I processed it, it was brighter than the HDR, so I ended up having to reduce the exposure on it before I added the mask.  There was a pesky tree in the upper right corner that I had to clone out, as well as a few dust spot.  I added a Tonal Contrast filter (just on the sand and Boardwalk) as well as a blue color cast removal (on the entire shot) in Color Efex.  I added an S Curve for contrast and finally, I did some noise reduction on just the sky to smooth it out a bit.

Thanks for stopping by today, I am still working on catching up on everyone’s work.