A Night Out on the Town

This post is dedicated to Perry from whom I borrowed the inspiration.


After receiving a kitchen pass last night, I decided to go down town to the Boardwalk in Bossier City and into downtown Shreveport. At our workshop last week Perry was talking about how he wanted to get some nighttime city shots from I-20. I wasn't going to brave the perils of the interstate so I took the safety of the Boardwalk. It's normally a 15-30 min drive to get there but Saturday night traffic was terrible. I guess there were a lot of other kitchen passes as well. Anyway, I was able to get some pretty cool shots from the water's edge (or at least as close as we're allowed to get) and then moved up to the Texas Street Bridge for a birds eye view. Finally I moved over to Shreveport and got some cool "streaming" shots.

I learned several things during my trek. 1) This city (cities) is beautiful at night. 2) I figured out how best to use my settings and especially how to use my manual setting (I have to first go to Aperture priority and set that, then to Shutter and set that. Manual will then use those two settings). 3) Bridges move, A LOT, and getting a "tack sharp" photo on them is not easy. 4)I need to get a remote for my shutter because trying to time traffic 12 seconds out is not fun (10 sec for the timer and 2 for the shot itself). And 5) How to sharpen and contrast cityscapes in Photoshop.

Updated - Winter In the City

This is an update to the earlier post, Winter In the City.  In it I discussed my disappointment in my ability to take any decent photos of downtown Shreveport while I was walking around.  Well I went back and decided to experiment with them.  There's a process called High Dynamic Range Imagery (HDR) where by you take 3 or more photos at different ISOs, one normal, one or two at a stops lower and one or two at stops higher.  Then you take fancy software and it will tone map and merge the photos into one picture where the shadows are very dark and the highlights are very light and all the colors are very vibrant.  Take a moment and Google Images HDR to get an idea of what it's supposed to look like.

Well, since I have neither the camera nor the fancy photo software (yet, see previous post) I had to fake it.  What I did was take the one photo I had and I manipulated the color to give it a faux HDR look.  First, using Photoshop Elements 6,  I went to Enhance>Unsharp Mask...  From there I increased the Amount % and Radius up or down until I got something I liked.  I didn't touch the Threshold.  I then either raised or lowerd the Contrast and Saturation so I got the color I wanted.  Again, this is not the "correct" way to do this but it will work in a pinch.  Take a look below and see how they came out.

P.S. In The Salvation Army photo I had to Shop out some power lines running through it.  That was a bit of a challenge!

Winter in the City

I got out of work early today (in training the last few) and decided to head down town to see what I could capture. It was my first dedicated endeavor like this and I had everything I needed in my handy little back pack I got from Elizabeth. Long story short (too late) I didn't get "the shot". I wouldn't even say I got anything too interesting. I don't know whether it was lighting, as it was an over cast day, or I'm just not a cityscape guy, but I was mildly disappointed by what I got. I may post some pics here when I clean them a little but don't get your hopes up.
One thing today's walkabout did produce was I got to know this city a little better. I went first to the roof of the Sam's Town parking garage and got some city shots then on to Texas Street for some building shots and stopped by the library for some photos for the Mrs. I then drove east to the Music museum. I was a little confused when getting out of my car I saw engraved in the building "Dedicated to the memory of those who fought in the World War". I couldn't figure out which war that were talking about until I realized at the time the building was built there was only one World War. Cool! There was a quote by Woodrow Wilson! on the side as well. Next I took a walk across the street to the old city grave yard and saw graves of C.S.A. solders and infants. There was one section of graves from East European Jewish immigrants from the 1800s. There were other graves all over of people from Germany, Prussia, France, Switzerland. I never new Shreveport had so much immigration back in the 1850s. It was very cool.

I plan on suggesting to Perry (our workshop instructor) we do a class downtown and maybe I can get some inspiration from my fellow shooters.

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