Using the Tamron 10-20mm Lens in the Upper Deck of the Friendly Confines

This is a photo that has been a long time coming. I made it in August of 2012 while my wife and I were in the middle of a unique doubleheader of seeing a game at Wrigley Field followed by a game at U.S. Cellular Field. We had some great seats on the first base side down low, but I wanted to try a shot like this one. I have always taken a shot from behind the plate when I visit a park. It is a way for me to show that I was there at the stadium. You usually can see much of what makes the park unique from this view. If I can I take a photo coming back at the press box as well, but this is the one that I usually like to see. I have liked this shot since I made it, but a couple of technical details prevented me from posting it sooner. I love how the field kind of lays out in front of you with the wide angle lens. This was my first real test with my 10-20mm lens at a stadium. The lens would make some of my most famous photos in the future, but it is kind of nice to look back and see how I used it early on.

Using Photomatix and Lightroom to Edit This View of Wrigley Field

This image was taken when I was deep into my HDR phase. I wanted to see everything with very little shadow involved. I used three images taken three stops apart and I processed them in Photomatix Pro. The shots were at +2, 0, and -2. I then took that 32 bit image back into Lightroom 5 to process it. The first thing that I noticed was that Photomatix really brought out the colors in the photo. The first step for me in Lightroom here was to desaturate the photo a bit. I then performed most of my slider tweaks, but something was still off. I used the graduated filter tool to darken the sky to give it a more realistic view. I then pulled down another graduated filter to adjust the temperature of the sky. I made it a bit more blue this way to give it that perfect day at the park feel.