Winter Photography of the Gazebo at Roger Williams Park in Providence, Rhode Island
Winter photography in Rhode Island can be breathtakingly. Thick ice, heavy snow and gorgeous sunsets can all add up to provide some great opportunities for photographers who are willing to head out in below freezing temperatures.
The Gazebo
On a recent late afternoon I was driving home from an appointment and happened to be in the vicinity of Roger Williams Park in Providence. The weather conditions looked promising, I had my warm clothes and my camera gear and decided to take a ride through the park to see if there was anything suitable for a little photography. I have had a vision of the Gazebo at sunset in mind for some time, and hoped that today might be the day.
I grabbed my gear from the trunk and trudged through the snow to reach the ponds edge in plenty of time to be ready for sunset. Unfortunately, the sky did not come to life with the colors that I had hoped, but I was able to get one shot that I was excited about. The photograph in this post was taken on a tripod with a wide angle lens at 14mm. A cable release was used, and 4 exposures were made at f/16, ISO 100 varying the shutter speed.
By varying the shutter speed I was able to get different exposures for different parts of the photograph. In one exposure the Gazebo itself was properly exposed, while the sky was almost completely blown out and all the cloud and color detail was lost. In the second photograph, the sky was properly exposed giving me the details of the clouds and the rich saturated colors in the sky. However, in this exposure the Gazebo was barely visible and appeared as a dark shape in the frame. The remaining two photographs were in between these two extremes.
The 4 photographs were processed in Lightroom for White Balance and Lens Corrections before being processed in Photomatix Pro HDR software. This is where the 4 photographs were blended together to create one photograph that represents the full range of the scene. This single photograph was then taken into Photoshop for my normal processing, which consisted of some minor dodging and burning, Curves adjustments to add a little bit of contrast to the ice in the foreground and the sky, and some minor sharpening.
The Gazebo in Roger Williams Park is an icon in the state of Rhode Island, and I would be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments.
2 Comments
Nice sot Mike! Photomatix Pro is such a great hdr software. Nice job! It makes me want to grab my camera gear and go to RW Park Zoo.
Thanks Nicolaas! Photomatix is pretty much all I use to process my HDR work. Roger Williams Park is a great place, so much to see and photograph! Thanks for stopping by, and I appreciate the kind words!