Scenic Overlook and Viewpoints of New York City

Brooklyn Pebble Beach offers great views of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Skyline across the East River.

Pictures of my Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14 were taken using a Nikon D7000 dslr, with a SIGMA 10-20mm 1:3.5 wide angle lens, and a Samsung Galaxy smartphone with a Platypod eXtreme mini-tripod.

In A Bit Of A Conundrum

I am in a bit of a conundrum, now that I am spending more time creating videos and buying new gear for my channel.

I see myself relegating photography to a second place. Last night, I realized that since I purchased the DJI drone last January, I have not taken any pictures with my Nikon D7000 DSLR. Every single new pictures or videos have been taken with my cell phone or my GoPro action camera.

Let me rephrase the previous statement, the only pictures taken with my Nikon camera, are the old pictures scanned at my sister's house this past summer when I began to digitize our family old pictures.

Some changes need to be made, if I want to fall off the wagon back into digital photography.

Throwback Thursday

This picture was taken in 2015, my first year getting into digital photography. When I bought my first DSLR, I used to walk around armed with my camera looking for places to photograph. I had no idea what I was doing but that didn't stopped me from trying. With so many historic buildings in Philly, photo opportunities are abundant. 

A good thing about photo walks is that even if my photography sucks, I get a hell of a lot of exercise. This particular day I got up early in the morning and took a few pictures inside UPenn University, the college grounds were completely empty thanks to the holidays. There was nobody there, therefore I had the place to myself. 

All by myself; this phrase just reminded me of one of my favorite songs = All By Myself by Eric Carmen. 

HDR Photography : The Frankenstein Way

This over saturated image above is what happens when a person is bored to death and goes the Frankenstein way using HDR. What can I say, once in a while it's fun to experiment, it doesn't hurt to try different things.

I was reading Trey Ratcliff's blog the first time I heard the term HDR. Can't remember how I landed in his blog. Immediately fell in love with the technique; when done correctly, the images come to life with dramatic contrast, incredible detail and vivid color. At the time I don't think I even had my first DLSR yet.

As someone with natural artistic talent, I was fascinated with the vibrant colors and making my images pop the way I wanted. To me is all about getting better color rendition in my photography.

Even though HDR photography has a lot of critics, I don't think is any different than processing and manipulating images in the darkroom. The difference, to me, is that now we don't have to deal with exposure to fumes and toxic chemicals. And is not messy.

There are lots of Frankenstein images out there. People take multiple exposures to create an HDR blend, then Frankenstein them together with over saturation and contrasting, just like I did with the above picture.

If there's one thing I've learned since I first began using HDR, is that adding this technique to certain images has given me more options. In my opinion, my photography is improving, and that is always a good thing.

Showcase : Printing Your Legacy

Now that I started to print big posters of my favorite images, I am all excited about the possibilities of decorating my man cave and also my office with them.

As I mentioned on a previous post, the image I recently found from my trip to the Dragon of the Cheoah Dam is my favorite. I like this picture so much that this week I decided to spend some time working on it to make it as big as possible without losing quality.

I had to crop the image a lot, to improve the way it looks. Cropping always involves cutting away part of the original image, results in some of the pixels being discarded and can change the width to height ratio.

Therefore, I was very careful making changes and editing the image. Learned recently that if I resize a photo for printing the photo may get soft and may need more sharpening. Also that is a good idea to save sharpening until the very last task, after I've applied other edits and resize the photo to its final size.

After the final edit, I sent online the 20" x 30" poster size to be printed. The original size image is 4928 x 3264 pixels, it is heavily cropped to remove unwanted areas to 3374 x 1847 pixels. This 20" x 30" poster will be used in my office as well as my man cave. The image was taken using my Nikon D7000 and a Nikon AF-S DX VR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED lens.

In anticipation of picking up the poster today, I stopped at A.C. Moore Arts and Crafts supply store to find a 20" x 30" poster frame. A.C. Moore has a large variety of various frame sizes at reasonable prices.

The poster looks fantastic, superbly printed. To say I was amazed at the poster quality is an understatement, it looks very professional. The time and hard work I spent editing the image paid off in the end.

As the old Epson printer ad used to say, "a print ensures your story will continue".

HERE is a link to my first ever 16" x 20" poster size image. 

Behind The Shot : Photo Postcards In Your Own Backyard

Sometimes I look at images of exotic destinations, they seem to be a lot of fun and exciting spots. Unfortunately, due to financial constraints or lack of free time, the majority of my shooting is done in locations not far from home.

One example of this is my favorite hangout place, New York City. In addition to the amazing city skylines, NYC have lots of historic landmarks that offer a wide range of potential compositions.

The Big Apple is a popular choice for landscape photographers, many of whom travel from distant states and other countries to shoot there.

Often, we think great images happen by luck, or because a person have expensive equipment. The truth is many great images are taken after years of return trips to the same spots.