Pier + Rain = Unhappy Sam

[sam_justice]

I went to the Pier last night hoping that the rain would clear up but leave me nice reflections on the floor, unfortunately the rain hadn't stopped and I forgot how stupidly hard the Pier is to shoot. Half the thing is ridden in darkness at night and the other half is stupidly bright, finding the mid point is incredibly hard.
On top of that the rain didn't help. Anyway, here's 3, I don't think any of them are portfolio worthy but worth sharing!

No 1 (I posted a similar shot to this before, decided to try again) -

No 2 - I loved colour of this helter skelter, but the rain really ravaged the image -

No 3 - Easy to take, but horrible to edit, it's straightened to the lighting, if I straighten it to the building then the lighting goes all skewy and vice versa.

 

[Morpheuss]

not to bad for the rain making it extremely tough I really love the pier sign on the last photo very nice

 

[Robin Usagani]

with a sign like that on the last photo, I love messing around with zoom blur sam . Do a bulb mode and change the zoom whitle taking the pic. It makes a really cool effect if you have not tried it before.

 

[sam_justice]

I was annoyed as I'd left my tripod at home, so couldn't really venture too much hence how stupidly underexposed some of these are. I want to mess around with exposures ranging from 4-30 seconds on the pier.

 

[phiya]

To me, this is where I actually love HDR photography. At night with lit signs and severely underexposed areas, if you take a few exposures, HDR them, and then carfully mask in photoshop you can get really neat results. That is what I did with this vegas shot.

Las Vegas Strip HDR by Ricky Jay, on Flickr

 

[sam_justice]

To me, this is where I actually love HDR photography. At night with lit signs and severely underexposed areas, if you take a few exposures, HDR them, and then carfully mask in photoshop you can get really neat results. That is what I did with this vegas shot.

Las Vegas Strip HDR by Ricky Jay, on Flickr

See I'd like to use HDR for that, did you run anything through on photomatix? Or do the exposures then mask them yourself?

 

[phiya]

I did run it through photomatix and then used the output as my top layer in photoshop. I took the original 3 exposers and masked through one layer at a time to create the final image. It actually takes a lot of masking because the dynamic range is so broad with the bright lights and the dark street/walkways... but I like the results. I haven't found another way to be able to see the people on the walkways and the trees etc, but still be able to clearly read the signs like you can when you're actually there.

 

[Derrel]

Where are all the girls in tank tops and denim shorts at the pier?

 

[sam_justice]

Where are all the girls in tank tops and denim shorts at the pier?

Welcome to England

 

[Robin Usagani]

They are all wearing raincoats. Come on mate... come to the US. Having your accent here in the US will give you a boost in almost anything. You can get the chicks... you can be a TV gameshow host (for some reason almost all gameshow will have a british dude or girl). I am sure you can use it for photograhy too hahaahah.

 

[Corvphotography]

what is HDR? :???: