Chambersburg Christmas Tree

Evening shot of the town square in Chambersburg, Pa. I used three -1 stop exposure bracket and merged them with Aurora HDR Pro.

Always Protect Your Gear

The falls attract many gulls because the food is plentiful. Occasionally you can spot a peregrine falcon in the gorge. Niagara Falls always has something interesting to offer. This image was taken from the Maid of the Mist. You will get very wet on that boat so make sure your equipment is well protected. I used large zip lock clear bag to cover my camera. Snipped a corner off just big enough to squeeze the lens through then capped the lens with a clear UV filter. Make sure to bring a micro fiber clothe to wipe the lens of water droplets frequently because the mist is fierce down there.

American Falls

Dramatic image of Niagara Falls. I prefer to shoot my falls images from low angles to show power and impact in my images. This image was taken from the Maid of the Mist boat passing by the American falls in the lower gorge. I converted it to black and white for more impact.

Central Park in New York City

I used a R79 filter on my camera to get the wintery effect while on a recent trip to New York. The R79 filter is a very deep red piece of glass and you will need to use a tripod and longer shutter speeds to get correct exposure. Your image will be red and white if your in color mode on camera so you either change the camera mode to black and white or convert to black and white in post processing later. These images benefit greatly with a boost in contrast.

Panorama of NYC

Panorama view of New York City from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.

Waterfalls and Photography

Waterfalls and photography go together like peanut butter and jelly. The falls come in all shapes and sizes and each one presents a different challenge. Large waterfalls like Niagara photograph better with shutter speeds around 1/4 sec or faster while smaller waterfalls have less volume of water photograph better at speeds of 1/4 sec or longer.

Aurora HDR Pro First Impressions

I have been using Aurora HDR Pro since it became available. You can purchase it at https://store.stuckincustoms.com/aurora-hdr-pro-holiday-bundle . Trey Ratcliff and the McPhun team have a winner here. This software is easy to use, has some awesome presets and with Trey's tutorials you can do your own style with ease. I like HDR but I am not a fan of the extreme HDR where photogs do the sky to dark and there are halos along the tree lines and way too much noise in their images. I am more of a perfectionist, I hate noise and I hate when images look too fake. This is all subjective and really just a matter of taste in what you prefer, so this is just my prefererences. This program converts RAW images seamlessly to the point I really don't need to convert with Adobe Camera Raw first. The bottom line is I may never use my old trusty standby, Photomatix to make an HDR image again. This new software is that good, buy it now and never look back. The only draw back is it's only for Mac users. One really cool feature is you can add a glow to highlights in your images without making the whole image ghostly looking. Here's a sample below of the glow look.