I got some serious picture taking done on my vacation to the Oregon Coast.
Here's a pic of the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport, Oregon. I took this at 1/15 sec and f/5.6. My tripod wasn't tall enough to get the angle I needed, so I used it as a monopod and rested it on the railing of the overlook. I blended the final photo to reduce noise and increase the definition lost from the slight camera movement.
Here's what I did:
1) Opened the Layers dialog in Gimp (or Photoshop) and made a duplicate layer.
2) Set the new layer to "Difference".
3) Selected the Move tool and clicked once on the new layer.
4) Used the arrow keys to move the new layer one pixel at a time until I could just barely see an outline of the details.
5) Changed the new layer to "Screen".
6) Adjusted the opacity down until I reached the desired effect. I wanted to reduce noise, increase the sharpness of the bridge, and balance the detail in the foreground and background.
7) Finally, I used the blur tool to tone down the really bright light in the center left of the picture.
Another view of the Yaquina bridge:
Here is the Alsea Bay bridge in Waldport, Oregon.
