The Hill

The Story
April, 2008. After New York, the second part in our US trip was Washington DC. I never thought of visiting DC. New York was always the idea, but after one evening at the movies (I can't remember which movie it was, but the story was in DC) I decided that, if we were to cross the Atlantic to see New York, it would be a waste not to go to DC. So we stayed 4 days in NY and the headed to DC for 3 more days (check the NYC - Times Square photo story for more details on the NY trip).
DC is almost the opposite of NY: it's a very clean, organized, low buildings city. It remembered me of European cities like Paris. It has plenty green spaces, the buildings are monumental and it was kinda hot (in opposition to NY where we freezed) when we were there. It has lots of monuments and we tried to see the most of them.
We traveled by train to DC and it was a very enlightening trip. We passed across Philadelphia and Baltimore on our way to DC. There was one thing that surprised us a lot. If we forget all the glamour of the great cities, the rest of the country is very poor. The suburbs are something unthinkable in European standards: very poor, very dirty, like nothing I can find here in Portugal (which is one of the poorer countries in Europe) except in slums. As the most powerful and most advanced nation in the planet, that kinda shocked me a bit.
Back to DC, we stayed in a very trendy (and noisy, as we found out later) hotel near the center and we mainly walked across the city. One of the spots to see was The Capitol, which, unfortunately, we weren't able to visit inside because all the tickets had been given when we got there. I took some photos there and then we continued our DC visit.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC

Shutter Speed: 1/200 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 20 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo


Post Processing
January 2010. My daughter was born in the 5th of this month and I was home almost one month now. In a few days I was to return back to work and try to return to my normal life after 4 intense weeks of parenting (it was my first kid). As the work home never stopped (with some 2/3 hours exceptions every now and then) the opportunity to grab the camera and get out was a mirage. So I decided to check some old photos to see if there was any worthy of a second chance. This photo seamed appealing so I decided to give it a shot.
I imported the NEF into Lightroom and started playing around with presets (as usual) and noticed one that I never had tried before: "Awesome BW" preset from synaestheta (you can find it here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/presets/discuss/72157612664073371/). The photo was almost perfect but it still needed some adjustments so I've: increased the Sharpening, reduced the Vignetting, increased the Contrast, the Exposure, the Brightness and the Clarity.
In CS4, I've simply increased the Brightness and the Contrast even more. I tried to increase these settings in Lightroom but, for some reason I can't explain, I didn't managed to get the same satisfactory result there.
And that was it. Basically it's the synaestheta preset with a (small) twist.


Final Photo


Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/The-Hill-152324661

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Flatiron, NYC

The Story
April, 2008. After more than a year after the original planned date for visiting New York, we finally managed to go there (check the NYC - Times Square photo story for more details)...
In our second day in New York we still had a lot of places to visit. The Flatiron Building was one of them. This peculiar building is one of the first skyscrapers ever built and it is more than 100 years old. It was finished in 1902 and it is a landmark in New York City. From this perspective, we can see that it is very thin in the front, clothing iron shaped (hence it's name).
I took some photos of it and moved on to the next spot.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
AF-S NIKKOR 18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5G ED

Shutter Speed: 1/250 second
Aperture: F/3.5
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo


Post Processing
This photo rested over 20 months in my hard drive, waiting for it's turn. Well, Christmas day, 2009 was the day.
I had imported this photo into my Lightroom catalog a few days after our arrival from NY, back in 2008. I had tried almost all of my presets in this one, but never got quite satisfied with the result. In this day, I decided to let the presets aside and do it manually from scratch.
First I straighten it and applied the proper crop. Then I increased the Sharpening and reduced 1 stop to the Exposure to darken the sky a bit. This left the photo too dark and brought me to the next step: increase the Fill Light. Then I increased the Blacks, the Clarity and the Contrast; reduced the Exposure another stop and increased the Brightness to compensate. To darken the sky even more, I reduced the Luminance of the Blues to the minimum. Now it was ready for the Black & White conversion. I prefer to do this step in CS4, so I imported the photo there.
In CS4, I've done Auto Levels, Auto Contrast and Auto Colors, and converted to Black & White (Infrared preset). I then added some Vignetting, increased the Contrast and the Brightness and had some noise reduction (the clouds part was a bit noisy). And that was it.
I usually publish my photos with 1024px in the largest size and use a great Photoshop action by Manyk to do the re-size.
You can find it here: http://manyk.deviantart.com/art/Web-Sharpening-with-Photoshop-29038461

Final Photo


Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Flatiron-NYC-147974783

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NYC - Times Square

The Story
April, 2008. After more than a year after the original planned date for visiting New York, we finally managed to go there. One year before we had to abort the trip for professional reasons, but this time all was set and we did went there. New York was the first stop of our trip. We stayed there for 4 days and the headed to DC for 3 more days.
Before we go, I've visited the B&H Photo website and made a shopping list. In this list was a lens that I was flirting for some time: the Sigma 10-20. I had seen beautiful photos taken with it and decided that the Sigma would be my next buy. At this time the dollar / euro exchange rate was very good to the euro side so, even being aware of the potential problems I could face with Portuguese customs when landing back in Lisboa, I decided that I would by the lens in the States. Even with the potential tax that I could pay in Lisboa, it was still worthy. So I visited B&H Photo (note for photo freaks: this IS The Photography Shop. It's large as a supermarket, has dozens of employees and a big queue on the door before it opens in the morning. And no, there were no promotions on that day :)), Adorama and a handful of small stores all around Manhattan. For my big disappointment, the Sigma 10-20 for the Nikon mount was sold out everywhere. In the third day of our stay in New York, by accident, I found a small store that had one copy of it. I couldn't believe! It was a bit pricey, comparing to the values I've seen on the net, but I couldn't care less. I was in NY and I needed that lens (I could have bought it before going to the States, but I preferred to save some money and buy it there).
So, with my new toy mounted on the D80, I walked the streets, fascinated with all that could fit inside it :)
The sun was setting and that night we had planned going to Times Square. We headed there and I was distracted looking through the 10-20 all the way when we arrived. I started taking photos in all directions and after a couple minutes I decided to look back. The main screen of the square had been all the time in my back. I can't put to works the feeling I had that moment. This place must be one of the greatest places I've ever been to. New York itself is a old, dirty, ugly city, but it has some places that make the trip worthwhile. This is one of them (another one is the view from the Top Of The Rock or from the Empire State Building at night).
This was the first photo, taken with the 10-20, that I published.
To finish, let me just say that this photo was taken hand held (no tripod whatsoever).

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC

Shutter Speed: 1/25 second
Aperture: F/4.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Original Photo


Post Processing
As you can figure out, there was almost no post processing on this one.
I just imported it into Lightroom and slightly increased the Exposure, Recovery, Clarity and Sharpening.
I usually publish my photos with 1024px in the largest size and use a great Photoshop action by Manyk to do the re-size.
You can find it here: http://manyk.deviantart.com/art/Web-Sharpening-with-Photoshop-29038461

Final Photo


Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/NYC-Times-Square-82858284

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