Posts Tagged ‘PDX’

Meredith’s Garden

Hidden amongst tall firs a few miles east of the Willamette River, there is a secret garden.  Meredith’s garden.  From the outside, it’s anyplace SE PDX, but inside, well inside, it’s a magic world.

As you can see, ‘magic’ is pretty much the same thing as trees and bushes, moss and leaves, and wet, plenty of wet.

The images above were recorded at around 12:00 PST on November 25, 2011, using the Nikon D3s and the AF-S NIKKOR 70-20mm f/2.8G ED at various focal lengths.  All of the images in this entry were converted to HDR using Photomatix Pro 4.1.4: Both single-shot and bracketed input images were used.  I currently favor Photomatix over HDR Efex Pro.  Both are excellent software packages, and although the Nik-ware provides a huge array of default styles, only a few of them are actually very useful.  By contrast, Photomatix seems to produce images with greater depth and pleasing contrast and color saturation with little effort.  The recent addition of real-time hints for parameter functions in Photomatix is very useful.  Additional contrast and saturation, as well as increased local/micro-contrast were applied using Kin Viveza 2 and Nik Color Efex Pro 4.

Copyright 2011 Peter F. Flynn.  No usage permitted without prior written consent. All rights reserved.

Rock Wall, Plants, and Light

Having sorted out the Thanksgiving Day feast, I returned to my usual spot looking out the front bay window of Meredith’s house, watching PDX flow by.  It’s an entertaining procession.  Based on my admittedly casual estimate, PDX must be at around the 1000% mark for cyclists.  And it’s not only during the infrequent sun-breaks, these people ride rain-or-shine.  Of there are also plenty of peds strolling by too: Old folks, young folks, odd folks.

Anyway, during a sun-break I noticed a particularly brilliant shaft of light illuminating a short span of rock wall across the street.  But really, it’s not just a rock wall, but a conspiracy of rock, and moss, and wetness, and weeds, and fallen leaves, and it’s remarkable how under the right circumstance a touch of light can change the dull into something interesting.

The images above were recorded at 09:30 PST on November 25, 2011, using the Nikon D3s and the AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED at 70mm.  Exposure was f/8.0 and 1/640s (-0.33 EV), ISO 1000.  Handheld.

 Copyright 2011 Peter F. Flynn.  No usage permitted without prior written consent. All rights reserved.

Cathedral Park, PDX

The northern gateway of Portland, OR is marked by a most beautiful structure named the St. Johns Bridge.  The steel suspension bridge spans the Willamette River between the Portlandian neighborhood of St. Johns on the east side and the industrial district the dominates the waterfront area near the Linnton neighborhood on the west side.  The bridge, completed in 1931, was designed according to a Gothic Cathedral-like theme, with a pair of large spire-topped towers, distinctively arched supports, and a high, long arching center span (1,200 ft).

Cathedral Park is located under the east end of the Bridge, and provides excellent views of the bridge supports all the way to the eastern main tower.  Not a large park, but a unique one.

Shooting the arches and the underside of the bridge presents all sort of challenges, chief among them being the high dynamic range scene generated by the (always) strongly backlit subject.  As the rival smartphone vendors seem to claim constantly these days…we have an app for that…  Actually, we have two new apps for this, which are HDR Efex Pro by Nik Software and the new version of Photomatix Pro (4.0), by HDRsoft.  I’ll have  a few comments on these software packages in the next few entries.

Images in this entry were recorded using the Nikon D3s, and the AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR, the AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED, and the AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II lens.  Bracketing for the HDR images of the bridge pillar and the support arches consisted of 5 shots at +2 EV, +1EV, 0 EV, -1 EV, and -2 EV.  These two HDR images were converted to BW using Nik Silver Efex  Pro 2.  The image of the Camellia Bush  is not HDR, but is a single color image, converted to BW using Nik Silver Efex Pro, masked to let some of the color of the flowers show through.

Copyright 2011 Peter F. Flynn. No usage permitted without prior written consent. All rights reserved.