Another week down, another week closer to being 21 and summertime. I’m still searching for a job, and it hasn’t been going too well, it looks like I’m going to be piecing together a few part-time positions to make ends meet…
My parents and grandparents came down last night to visit and celebrate my dad’s birthday. We went to Water Street Brewery, and then came back to my apartment for coffee and cake and presents. I even cleaned my apartment (imagine that!).
Other than that, I’ve been really busy the last week trying to finish up all my design projects and all of the usual ‘end-of-semester’ stuff…its been pretty hectic…I registered for classes on Friday for fall quarter (of my SENIOR YEAR….YIKES). It is kinda hard to wrap my head around the fact that at this time next year, I’ll be days away from graduation and starting “real life”…kinda scary to think of it like that. I’m going to have a pretty full plate next quarter as well, I’m currently signed up to take Advanced Structural Concrete Design, Architectural Design, Building Investment Economics, Professional Presentation Techniques,and of course, Senior Design I. I’m really looking forward to finally taking some “studio” type classes where I can be creative and play the role of architect for a semester or two…
This week’s photo is of the world-famous Quadracci Pavilion addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. This is arguably one of my favorite places in the city. I feel so awestruck just being in the presence of such an extraordinary building, but maybe that’s just the architect in me : ) The unique feature of this picture is that it’s actually composed of 3 pictures. I took 3 pictures with different exposures and merged them into a single image using the HDR (High Dynamic Range) feature in Photoshop CS5. It allows me to capture the objects in the shadows without overexposing the sky, like what would happen in a standard photograph. It’s a really neat idea that I’ve played around with in Photoshop before, but CS5 has some really great new changes that make it much easier to work with the files. The other cool thing I did was play with CS5’s new “Content Aware” fill feature. This is basically a way to delete things in the photo and make it look as if there was nothing there in the first place. In this picture, I took some time and removed a bunch of high school kids who were out front taking pictures for their prom. You can see a few still on the footbridge that I couldn’t quite get rid of, but I was able to remove most of them standing in the grass out front.
I’m really happy with how it turned out, but let me know what you think!
Thanks! 
Who says I can't be good at everything? 
Wow! Steve, great picture. I’ve been reading about HDR in my photo magazines and wanting to try HDR pictures too, but I just have CS2 and PSE8. Dave says I can buy CS5 when I get a Mac but that’s not in the near future.
Just another week until your 21 – yippee! See ya soon.