Iconic Seattle Skyline.

Probably one of the most-used vantage points in all of photography is that of Kerry Park in the Queen Anne neighbourhood of Seattle, WA. This is precisely why I chose it as my testing ground for my first serious photo sesh. 

We spent all day in Seattle, making a family outing of it. We visited Black Coffee Co-op for the first time, and I must say - if you care about what you put into your body, and about the people preparing your food, please give them a look. 

This session was definitely a great first one. While I did not get to stay past five o'clock, I have already learned a few valuable things: 

1) Gloves are a must. 

2) A shutter release cable may be a good thing to get, or utilizing the camera's timer is something I should do. After going into Lightroom, I realized that there was shake in a lot of my photos despite using a tripod. 

3) A polarizing filter is probably a good idea as well. 

4) Too much contrast in post-production = too much noise. 

5) Just because you have your camera pointed in a certain direction, does not mean that another photographer won't step right in front of it.

I used Photomatix Pro to combine the bracketed images and to apply the major adjustments. Then I opened them in Photoshop to do away with any residual noise or litter on the lens (shown as spots in photos), and crop and finalise the images.

Here are some good pulls from my first major photo sesh:

I am not extremely happy with all of them, but for my first outing with my camera, and for my first time doing HDR, I don't think it went all that bad. And, heck!, I learned a few things along the way.