February - Top of the World

I have been VERY lucky this month - Clare surprised me with the best birthday present I could possibly have hoped for... 3 days in NYC for the two of us.

I decided to travel fairly lightly (camera wise) - Taking just the D300 + 18-200vr, and the G9 as a walkabout for the evenings.

Our first morning was spent at the Empire State Building - We arrived there at 08:30, which turned out to be the right thing to do... It was deserted, and we also caught the sun rising;

This shot is a 3 stop, 3 shot, HDR image, taken with the D300 perched on a ledge (no tripod).

I decided on the HDR route, as I was shooting into the sun - I wanted the reflection in the water, but at also wanted to keep detail the foreground buildings.

I combined the three .NEF RAW files in Photomatix - and then output the resulting image into Photoshop.

I ran a 'Cool Blue' action on the image - Then applied and mask, to that it only effected the sky.

I then duplicated the image onto another layer, and selectively lightened the parts of the buildings that I wanted to pick out (the gold steeple for example).

It was a fair bit of work, but I think the results are worth it.

I have lots of other images to play with from the trip yet - Can't wait!