Monday, December 29, 2008

Pleasant St, Northampton

The eve before Christmas Eve I had a few hours to spare. So, like most days I have free time, I packed up my gear and headed to Northampton. There is this coffee shop on Pleasant St that always peeks my interest. The window fogs up and makes a very interesting composition. I parked my car. Walked to the coffee shop. By the time I got there the SUV that was in front of the shop was now gone. I was thrilled! I finally had a great angle to shoot from and a plenty of space to work. Not being cramped between the bumpers of two cars made me happy. Just as I set my tripod up another SUV pulls up. I was standing in a parking space. Tripod all set up. Camera in my hand. Facing the store front and side walk. Could it have been more obvious what I was trying to accomplish. The owner of the SUV stepped on his gas pedal, the tires spun in the slush as he moved forward about a foot in a half. Ignoring his pathetic attempts to move me I placed my camera on the tripod. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him slowly creeping forward. Growing increasingly irritated the closer he came. I grabbed my tripod and bag and moved forward onto the sidewalk. I turned, gestured for him to move forward while saying, “by all means take the damn spot, I’m not working on something here.” I placed my bag and tripod down and stood there waiting for him to get out of his SUV and walk away. I was waiting for him to leave so I could get between his space-hogging SUV and the other massive SUV in front of him. But, this man never got out his SUV, he sat there for less than a minute before he tore out of there in a blaze of idiocy. So, happy once again. I set my tripod up, aligned the shot, pressed the shutter, and fired away. After a few minutes, a few shots, some adjustments, I set the exposure needed to do a set of HDR shots. Here is the Coffee shop as I saw it on the Eve of Christmas Eve.

Toned Coffee shop hdr resized

2 comments:

Greg Saulmon said...

Did you convert to monochrome before merging the exposures, or after? I've been meaning to experiment with that.

Jeffrey Byrnes said...

This particular photograph was put through the HDR process first then toned afterwards. I have been working on toning photos first and then putting them through HDR. It seems to be working out just fine. I have stumbled upon a very informative article that talks about doing half the photograph in HDR and then leaving the other half without HDR to get a better quality in the sky. I will try and get you a copy of the article. It will make dealing with the pix-elated sky that much better.