Golden Gate Bridge at Blue Hour
New Journal 38 – Long days
I’m Fighting back the sleep as I write this. This morning was another sunrise shoot. Julien (also known as Beboy) and I are beginning our days at 4:00am and ending at around midnight. The chase is on to capture this beautiful city amidst weather conditions that are incredibly unpredictable.
For the image you see today, when we arrived at this spot, there was no fog to be seen. 15 minutes later we were presented with this. 30 minutes later we couldn’t see 10 metres ahead and our tripods were soaked.
We’ve spent the last 2 days scaling cliffs for composition of the city skyline. Tonight, I think we’ll find the spot we’ve been looking for.
A bonus of so much exploration is that we found an isolated, not-well-known spot for the 4th of July fireworks. To the left of us on Treasure Island there was a line of photographers fighting for position. We, however, sat on a grassy ledge of a cliff, relaxing in the sun with an even better view. It was lovely to spend the evening with Julien and Sabine, his girlfriend. We ate food and taught each other bad words in our respective languages. I even taught them the worst word imaginable…you know the one.
Julien has a strange fascination with Dora the Explorer. He’s learning English through her. But, he often talks about her as if she’s real. And very often, he will quote her in the exact same way a priest would quote the words of Jesus in a moment wisdom.
At 0ne point we were chatting and Julien said ‘Oh, Dora said that once she was on a blue train and she wanted to go faster’. We looked at him. ‘That’s the end of the story’ he said. There may be wisdom in there somewhere. He then proceeded to tell us that Dora has a friend named Swiper who is a sneaky fox.
I think he has mental problems. Right, it’s 8:00am. I’m going to bed.
The Cool Bits – Technical Info
Processing Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Processing method: Photoshop & Photomatix
No. of Exposures: 3
EV Range: -2 0 +2
Aperture: f/9.1
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 17mm
Lens: Canon 17-55mm
Camera: Canon 60d
Plugins: Nik Color Efex for vignetting and contrast adjustments
Luminance Masks: N/A
Photomatix Settings: Default> Strength 60>Saturation 36>Luminosity 1> Detail Contrast 1> Lighting Adjustments 3
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Today’s Photo – Golden Gate Bridge
I don’t have much to say about this image. It wasn’t difficult to process and the workflow is identical to the one in my Photomatix tutorial.
Reminder – Download Luminance Mask Actions
You can download my 18 point luminance mask actions for Photoshop completely free – [wpdm_file id=1]
Before the Joys of Post-Processing
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This entry was posted on Friday, July 5th, 2013 at 3:02 pm
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