Taken from Museum Campus, by the planetarium, looking back on the city. Sears Tower stands above the other skyscrapers. The boat in front is part of several that provide tours on Lake Michigan.
Combination of 3 photos, processed in Photomatix.
@dibzgreasley@leestevo Thanks Lee-Ann and Debs, for your kind comments. And yes, you both picked up on the fact that despite the sunny skies, it was cold! You can sort of see people bundled up on the boat.
Wonderful shot of the skyline along the waterfront! I see lots of green in the park so Spring has truly sprung in Chicago finally! Yea! Following such
a long winter, you must be overjoyed!
OK, you've certainly sold me on Photomatix as I see the similarity of this to your B&W skyline that I love. Dare I ask another question? I know where you're standing. You used a 50 mm focal length but you are across the lake in this view. Crop? If so, how is it your Exif info is all intact? And your image at 72 dpi is still 10+MB, a very large file. (I ask, because trying to use Franks's suggestions, I saved a merged file as PS RAW and ended up with a 130MB image! ...my storage is groaning already, so deleted THAT in a hurry!) Sorry to throw so many questions at you, but I took my first bracketed images on a 365 meetup 4 years ago & until now never knew how to put them together! Now I'm like a puppy with a bone and I can't let go of it! Thanks again! I'll buy you lunch one day in Chi...
@Weezilou Actually, it isn't cropped at all. I was standing just below the entrance to the aquarium, on the shoreline side of the walkway that goes around the building. And I didn't realize the exif is still there -- another advantage to Photomatix as Nik takes away some of the exif. The aperture and ISO are accurate, but the shutter speeds were 1/50, 1/60, and 1/80th. In my Aperture file, the size of the file is 66.92MB (also just notice that -- ridiculous), but when I exported it to jpg, it came out at 10+MB instead. I have had files that were over 100MB in size, but when I export them (I use Aperture as my main storage system and first level editing one so export from there), I can export at full size or half size. When I export at half size, they usually come out about 3.5MB or so. I have serious memory issues on my computer. Even using dropbox, I can only keep one month worth of photos at a time so at the end of the month, I export my library to an external hard drive, backup computer and hard drive to another hard drive, and empty trash on the computer so I can start over. I usually use up about 50GB a month, which is about all I have free on my laptop at the start of the month -- when I travel and take a lot of photos, I have to save to an external drive or I run out of space within a day or two. I need a new computer desperately so know what you mean about file size problems. And, I think it would be great fun to meet when you are back in the city!
@taffy1...
1>I can't believe you're as a night owl to the same degree I am... (and when I get to bed, I dream about adjusting photos all night...)
2>We arrive the 17th of June & will be in town for a week. Pick the place...it's my treat. From the start, I've appreciated your willingness to share information and help everyone. I can't thank you enough!
I haven't even looked at the photos I took today for playing with these "samplers" I took on the 1st! After a month with the kids from the outset in Chicago to present, I've got "free time" to work on all this now. Perhaps I'll start with a good night's rest... Thanks...Light's out!
@taffy We are so looking forward to getting to Chicago, not long now :). I have to store my photos on a networked external drive too. Craig reliably informs me it writes the image across 4 hard drives so if one fails I havent lost it.....all a bit techy for me!
I love the reflection of light in the water...really lights up the scene. On my monitor the clouds look unnatural, though, having hard lines from the HDR processing or high contrast, but I guess the problem lies with my monitor and not your picture!
a long winter, you must be overjoyed!
1>I can't believe you're as a night owl to the same degree I am... (and when I get to bed, I dream about adjusting photos all night...)
2>We arrive the 17th of June & will be in town for a week. Pick the place...it's my treat. From the start, I've appreciated your willingness to share information and help everyone. I can't thank you enough!
I haven't even looked at the photos I took today for playing with these "samplers" I took on the 1st! After a month with the kids from the outset in Chicago to present, I've got "free time" to work on all this now. Perhaps I'll start with a good night's rest... Thanks...Light's out!