H Line: Denver Convention Center

H Line Northbound: Denver Convention Center Station

Color and B/W – which do you prefer?

H Line Northbound: Denver Convention Center Station

D Line Southbound

Denver Convention Center Station

D Line, Denver Convention Center Station

The Coors Silv…errr, Red Bullet

All aboard the bad beer train…

At the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden. Which take do you like better?

BNSF

Can’t decide. Color of B/W? (Probably ought to crop in and take out everything from the telephone pole over, huh?)

Monorail: Take 3

I like this shot generally, but felt like the two versions I produced originally were both a little off. One was too overcooked and the other was okay in spots and not in others. So I tried again.

RAW

The other day I posted several versions of the shot below. In each case, I began with a three-shot bracket (one over-exposed and one-under-exposed) and used Photomatix to generate a High Dynamic Range (HDR) composite. Then I pulled it up in Adobe Camera Raw, made some color and balance adjustments, then used Nik’s Viveza and Color Efex suites to produce the final versions I posted. This is how most of my shots are processed these days.

However, the technology can make us lazy. When shooting, we might shoot wider than we need, knowing we can crop in Photoshop. We might not worry about getting the white balance right because Camera Raw fixes that. And so on.

I don’t want to be lazy, though, and am constantly doing what I can to improve at getting it right in the camera. How good does the shot look without any processing at all?

So I dug back into that Denver Garden Railway set and opened up the RAW shot I used for Iron Horse.

The Denver South Park & Pacific Railroad

The DSP&PR steams past the Dallas Hotel. Sorta. Thanks again to Alan Olson and the Denver Garden Railway Society, and especially to Joe Foss. This locomotive is his, and he repainted and re-lettered the cars behind it.

Infrared w/ color

Iron Horse

Variations on a theme. This was taken yesterday at the Denver Garden Railway Society site at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden. Many thanks to Alan Olson, Joe Foss, Sam Kunugi, Paul Gunther, Tommy Stewart and Mike Harris.

This locomotive is owned and was being operated by Etzel Wilhoit.

Basic HDR Process

Denver & Rio Grande

2:45 for Golden

Brooks Locomotive Works, #30

Remix Friday: Shots by Brandon Tutt and Michael Pecaut

Some time back the crew here discussed the idea of remixing – taking someone else’s shot and doing your own processing thing on it. I don’t know if this will catch on, but here we go with Remix Friday.

Back at the beginning of February Mike Pecaut came to visit and we went downtown to do some shooting. I took several shots of this venue – the Buell Theater at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts – but Mike’s was by far better. I even went back to see if I could recreate what he captured, and failed. So here’s my take on the best shot of the day.