Wooden ‘Bolt

We’ll continue our Kennywood tour this morning with a trip to one of the most favorite and beloved rides at the park, the Thunderbolt.  Originally built in 1924 under the name Pippin, it was rebuilt in 1968 and renamed the Thunderbolt.  It offers a minute and a half of wooden roller coaster fun over 2,880 feet of up, down and around family fun, as long as you are at least 4’ 4” tall.  (No I am in no way affiliated with Kennywood Park nor do I get paid to promote their awesome rides).

One of the cool parts of the Thunderbolt is how it almost comes right through one of the most famous places to eat at Kennywood, the Potato Patch (any guess what they specialize in?).  I took this shot standing on one of the planter boxes located towards the rear of the seating area, where the ride comes within feet of during its first downhill portion.  I threw on the fisheye, waited for the right time, and bracketed away.

Just because I waited for the train to come by, doesn’t mean that I was going to get exactly the shot that I wanted.  I needed to start the bracketing a little early, to make sure that one of the long exposures captured the car going by, and to get the motion blur that you see above.  After processing the seven images in Photomatix, I tonemapped the +3 exposure, as the car was right in front of me at the time of that shot and masked it into the HDR.  Applied a Pro Contrast filter to remove the color cast and improve the contrast, as well as a Tonal Contrast filter in Color Efex.  I also applied Progressive Sharpening to the tracks and cars in the front of the shot to help bring out the details.

Happy Thursday everyone.  See you tomorrow.