Last night I attended the Pittsburgh Penguin game at CONSOL Energy Center against the New York Rangers and the Pens were victorious against their divisional rivals 2-0.  The game saw goalie Marc Andre Fleury tie Tom Barrasso for the shutout mark for the Pittsburgh Penguins as well as Evgeni Malkin score two more points to extend his league leading total.  Other than the game though, the story was the deconstruction of the old home of the Pens, the Civic Arena, or the Igloo as it is affectionately known in the ‘Burgh.  Last night another huge step was made in its demolition, as one of the metal leafs of the roof was brought down shortly before game time.  So my wife and I ventured up to the Brew House in CONSOL to get a view from the upper level, which you can see above.

This one was taken with my Canon S95 P&S.  Unfortunately I left the ISO at 1250 so it is a little grainier than I would like, but I do like the wide angle look.

It is kind of an eerie sight.  Looking inside the shell of the old building, still filled with some seats and one lone banner on the roof, you think back to all the games that were played there.  There was even a Stanley Cup won in that building, though that year it was the Detroit Red Wings who lifted Lord Stanley’s Cup and not the Penguins.  It was also there that the Penguins celebrated their own Cup victory just one year later and where I had the opportunity to see the Cup as well.  Concerts, shows, events, parties all were held in the iconic building.  Now, little is left but steel, concrete and hanging wires.

This is the same view from the Brew House, just a couple of hours after the first one when it was dark out.  Thought I would give B&W a try on this one.

It really is the end to an era.  The iconic dome was instantly recognizable to any Pittsburgher or hockey fan, with its retractable roof sealed shut for the last couple of decades of its life.  CONSOL Energy Center is certainly an upgrade in terms of amenities, space and features, but there is something about the charm of the old Igloo that can never be replaced.

Like I said, there was a hockey game last night too!  As usual, I made my way down to the ice for some shots during pregame warm ups.  Above is a shot of Evgeni Malkin, or Geno as he is often called in the ‘Burgh, skating by.

And another one of him cleaning off his stick.  You can see the ice flying off around his gloves.

James Neal is consistently lighting the lamp for the Pens and they rewarded him with a 6 year contract the other day.

Jordan Staal, just about a week back from a knee injury, has been on fire since his return.

Pens defenseman Deryk Engelland takes a breather along the wall.

One of the top penalty killers and hardest working players in the league, Craig Adams makes the turn along the boards.

That’s all for today folks.  Thanks for stopping by and see you tomorrow!

For today’s image we head back to the South Street Seaport in New York City, one of my favorite places to shoot when I am there.  You know, I feel like I say that a lot about New York, but really there are very few places in the city that I don’t enjoy shooting at!  I’ve never been down to the Seaport during the day, which I may have to remedy on my trip there in a few months.  I really like this shot because it has a lot of different elements to it.  You have the lower Manhattan skyline on the left, a chain restaurant on the right, some touristy girls just left of center posing for a group picture, some motion blur from the flags waving…just so much to look at, yet it is all almost zoned off by itself.

Thanks for stopping by today folks, see you all tomorrow.

Good morning everyone and happy Monday!  I hope that you all enjoyed your weekends!  Like I said on Friday, mine shaped up to be quite busy, though yesterday was a bit more relaxing that I had originally anticipated, as I was a little under the weather and didn’t end up shooting.  That being said, today’s images are from a few weeks back on the North Shore of Pittsburgh.  I’ve posted so many wide angles of this vantage point, that I decided to throw on  the 70-200 and get some closer cropped shots.  Something I always forget about that lens is how crisp the HDRs are with it!  The above shot is one of the supports of the Clemente Bridge with the Renaissance Hotel on the right.

Ok, I know that THIS one wasn’t taken with the 70-200, but I don’t think that I’ve ever shot this area in portrait orientation before, so I wanted to give it a shot!

This one is a shot of the reflections of one of the supports of the bridge in the Allegheny River.  The water wasn’t quite still so I wasn’t able to get crisp reflections, but I like the way that it turned out.

Finally we have the Andy Warhol Bridge, the middle bridge of the Three Sister Bridges of Pittsburgh (with the last one being the Rachel Carson Bridge).

Thanks for swinging by today folks.  See you all tomorrow!

Good morning everyone and welcome to another weekend!  Well, the start of it at least.  This is shaping up to be a busy weekend already for me!  Starts with tomorrow morning (14 mile run in training for a marathon), potential client meeting in the afternoon, the Pens play the Flyers Saturday afternoon, hosting some friends on Saturday night, drop off prints for a client on Sunday morning and then meet some local photography buddies to shoot downtown Pittsburgh on Sunday afternoon!  That being said, a lot needs to get done today before any of that fun can happen, so a quick post today at HDR Exposed!  This is the view from Mt. Washington overlooking Pittsburgh, with focus on one of the viewfinders that offers a peak at our great city.

I hope that you all have a great weekend!  See you all on Monday!

Well, the Brooklyn Bridge that is.  I know that I said yesterday that I was going to be working on some shots from a little more recent (these are from December 2010) but I happened to see these unprocessed brackets while I was doing a little bit of housekeeping in Lightroom and couldn’t help but process them.  I debated whether or not to post all of them, but I decided that they are all just different enough to make for an interesting post.  The one above is my favorite, where I am actually standing in between the cables near the middle of the bridge.  That image will also be used as an example in the new HDR: Before and After series that I am doing.  But more to come on that a little later!

For this one I wasn’t sure if I liked the B&W or the color better.  I’ll leave that up to you to decide.  The one thing that I am not thrilled about with this shot is that, even though it was shot at f16 to capture the sunflares, it was such a cloudy/hazy day that the sun just looks like a big blob of light.  That kind of made me lean towards the B&W.

Similar to the one about, just in portrait orientation instead of landscape.

Finally, I wanted one with some cars going across the bridge as well.  I masked in one cars and left a ghost car a little farther back, just for kicks.

As mentioned earlier, I will be launching a new section on my blog, HDR: Before and After.  There will two different main features of this section.  One will be from original exposure to HDR and one will be from HDR pre to post process, with some commentary around each.  I’ve always been fascinated by before and after pictures of anything (not sure why, might be kind of weird) and I finally got a plugin that I like to actually work.  So stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by today folks, see you all tomorrow.

A quick share today.  As I said the other day, I really have a backlog of pictures that I’ve taken over the last few weeks that I need to get up on the blog, but with client shoots, work and about a thousand other things I haven’t been able to get them all processed!  I’m hoping to have some time tonight to dig through some of them, but until then, here’s one of my favorites from 2010.

This was taken in Allegheny Cemetery in Lawrenceville, PA, just outside of the city of Pittsburgh.  Mike ‘Theaterwiz’ Criswell was in town and after shooting a gloomy Pittsburgh, we grabbed a bite and headed out of the city.  It turned out to be a beautiful fall day, which was an awesome backdrop for the cemetery.  This was taken at the top of the hill, near one of the mausoleums.

Last Friday I rode the trolley from our neighborhood down to the South Side of Pittsburgh, as I was meeting some my wife and a few others for dinner at the famous Hofbrauhaus.  Located in South Side Works, the German restaurant is just about 28 blocks from the station where I disembarked and I wanted to take the opportunity to get some candids and other urbexy type shots.  Armed with only my 50mm I set off in the wind and the snow.  The very first thing that I came upon was the set of garage doors that you see above.  The purple doors really caught my eye.

Right past the garage in the first shot there are a collection of office buildings that used to be home to part of the rail system that ran along the Monongahela River.  Drawn to the shape of the fire escape and the windows, I fired off a few shots.

The only shot that I knew I wanted to get before I made my journey to the South Side was of this tunnel.  I spend my Saturday mornings running by this every weekend and always found it curious that there was a tunnel in the middle of this huge wall.

As you venture further down East Carson Street the density of bars and restaurants dramatically increases and I wanted to take the chance to grab a few candids.  This is certainly something that you don’t see on a Friday night in the South Side: someone reading a book.  With a little help from VSCO I did my best to create a film look to this…anyone have a preference for the color or B&W?

Along with all the bars, restaurants and tattoo parlors you will encounter a handful of these little trinket/knock off shops.  Who doesn’t love a little bokeh every now and then?

The last shot for today is of a girl smoking a cigarette outside of the Beehive coffeehouse.  I was trying to get and she was actually exhaling, but I had to settle for this one instead.

These were all processed with onOne’s Perfect Effects (unless otherwise noted).  Don’t get me wrong, I love processing HDRs, but sometimes it is nice to process single exposures too.

That’s all for today folks.  Thanks a lot for stopping by.

Good morning everyone and happy Monday!  I hope that you all enjoyed your weekend.  Today is shaping up to be an extremely hectic Monday so I’ll keep this post short and sweet.  My plan was to post a series of shots that I took while out and about Friday night, but with the busy weekend, I wasn’t able to get them all processed.  So instead I figured I would break up the snow with a shot that I took from when we visited the Dreams Resort in Punta Cana a few years back.  This was before I discovered HDR so it’s just a single image of the sunrise.

Thanks for stopping by and apologies for the short post.  Back to normal tomorrow!

I’ve been stockpiling some cool, interesting and unique beer bottles that I’ve consumed over the last couple of months with every intention of throwing one in a post now and then, just never got around to it.  Have a father who works at a beer wholesaler has enabled me to sample a wide array of brews, many of them with labels that are out of the norm.  I really enjoyed processing this one, so I may be sharing more in the future!  This one’s for you Chris!

This is beer is called Robert Johnson’s Hellhound on my Ale, a tribute to the famous blues singer Robert Johnson and his song Hellhound on my Trail.  The legend is that Johnson supposedly sold his soul to become a great blues musician when he met the Devil at a railroad crossing at midnight and the Devil tuned his guitar before returning it to him, giving him his legendary skills.  Johnson also is on the list with Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones and Kurt Cobain (among many others) who died at the young age of 27.

Anyways, back to the beer.  This is an India Pale Ale (IPA) and if Johnson sold his soul to the Devil to become a musician, then I think that Dogfish Head may have sold its soul to get every last drop of hops it could into this beer.  Don’t take that as a bad thing, because I love IPAs, especially American craft ones that are all hopped up.  This one doesn’t have the bite or the aftertaste of a strong IPA though.  While it does start out strong, it finishes smooth, allowing you to taste just the hint of citrus that is thrown into the beer (which was put in as an honor to Johnson’s mentor, Blind Lemon Jefferson).  While it is mildly carbonated, it is one of the most drinkable and overall smooth IPAs I’ve had in a while.

And if you don’t like IPAs or hoppy beers, then there is always Rock Bottom Brewery, with their in house brewed beer.  Stopped there last week for a drink with some friends.  The White Ale is good, but again, I’d have to recommend the IPA!

That’s all for today folks!  I hope that you all enjoy your weekend!

Finally got some more snow yesterday!  Since it was just a dusting, I didn’t stray too far from our home to get some captures of it.  In fact, I just walked up and down my street with the 50mm on to see what I could see.  The shot above is one of my favorite shots that I took of a leaf just barely holding on to its branch, and the blowing wind didn’t make it any easier to capture it.  I also used the newly acquired (at least for me!) Visual Supply Company (or VSCO) software to process it and I really liked the result.

The next shot is just around the corner from our neighborhood and I couldn’t quite decide which version I liked better, the color or B&W.  Any preference?

Both of the next two were taken out our front door, one of our lamppost and one of our front steps.  I really liked how you could see the snow falling in both of these.

The empty branches on this tree on the street behind our house looked kind of creepy as they were so barren.

This HDR is a capture of my neighbor’s hedges, with the small branches supporting more and more snow.

Finally, these are the bushes that run along the side of our house, also processed with the VSCO software.  If you look at the lower right, again you can see some snow falling.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these snow shots as much as I enjoyed taking them.  I know that everyone gets a retirement home in Florida…I may opt for Minnesota so that I can see snow more often!

See you all tomorrow!