Sunday Morning Walk on Mt. Washington - Pittsburgh Skyline

Call me a Homer.  I think Pittsburgh's skyline is very underrated when it comes to national skyline publicity.  Few cities have an observation like Mt. Washington.  Add the two together, you can get some very nice shots.
Back in the day, the mid-60s, my grandparents had an apartment on Grandview Avenue.  My sister and I would spend many hours watching the coal movement on the Monongahela River.  Yes, some days had limited vision due to the steel mills.  In the sunlight, it was sort of a yellowish haze.  And on some days, it was as clear as it was this morning.
On Sunday, my sister and I returned to the scene where we walked many years ago.  The day was perfect.  Pittsburgh blue sky, no clouds.  I must be living right, because there was a 'barge' heading down river to the Ohio.  In my memory, the barges pushed by the tugs seemed to be longer, maybe eight long by two wide.  Matters not today, this was an awesome trip down memory lane.
The skyline is not as I would remember it.  Back in the day, the Gulf building and the Koppers building were it.  it was a big deal when USS Steel built the building that now in monikered by UPMC.
Photographically, was out still testing the D780.  I have a few panorama sets to work.  This is a single shot.  I used a 50 mm prime lens.  I'd like to work more with the primes when I can.  Would have been nice to have more power when the barge went by.  Guess I have to go back for more tries.
The Pittsburgh Skyline from Mt. Washington.

Pittsburgh Skyline - Blue Sky

NIKON D780 Ver.01.00/50mm f/1.8G

50mm, 1/640 Sec, f/8, ISO 110 (AUTO)

MANUAL Mode, Size 16:9

Pittsburgh: Monongahela Incline

One of the first engineering marvels I have early memories of is the Mon Incline.  My grandparents had a residence on Mount Washington then - overlooking the Monongahela River.  As a kid, I could watch the tugs pushing barges full of coal up and down the river all day.  
Coming from the east, going to Mount Washington means crossing the Liberty bridge and up PJ McArdle roadway.  The road climbs the two hundred feet from the bridge to the top of the cliff in .8 miles.  That comes out to close to a 4% grade.
Crossing McArdle roadway about halfway up is the Mon incline.  The incline itself travels over 360 feet up the hill from the south side to Grandview Avenue.  The incline was built in 1870 to carry steelworkers to their homes on top of the hill.  There were many inclines in Pittsburgh and now only two remain, the Mon and the Duquesne.
So last Saturday I was driving up McArdle Road, like I have in the past so many times, the sun caught the autumn leaves leaving a tunnel of gold around the incline rail.  I was thinking this was the shot of the day.  
There is no parking along the road, so a half mile walk down and half mile walk back up was in order.  No problem there.
Now that the logistics part is over, setting up for the picture is next.  I though the best shot would be shooting from downhill going uphill.  This was due to sun position.  In reality, that didn't work out so well.  The best shot by far was shooting from uphill - looking downhill.  I'll have to deal with the sun issues later.
I shot this with the D500, still testing.  And as such, I configured the camera to save the RAW file to the primary card and a JPG to the secondary card.  So I have a JPG for comparison.  That usually doesn't happen.
A side note, this is why I shoot RAW and process my own shots.
To be fair, the JPG settings I used are very base and bland.  As a general rule, I just don't do JPG.  The camera will do 'better' if configured for vivid colors and in camera HDR.

This shot has so much potential, but needs a lot of 'help' work.
Clearly the sky is blown.  After that, there are some distractions.  I'm not sure about the 35 MPH sign - because it belongs.  Also the street lamp is an eye catcher.  Again, it belongs, but.....  Down the road, there is an orange detour sign that doesn't belong.  That's easy removal.  There's also a sign on the protective fence that could be removed.
In the end, I decided if the removal was clean that all these items needed to go.  The subject is the incline car and the gold leaves.  I also like the stained concrete on the right.  The correct light on the concrete could really help.  Other than those subjects, the rest needed to go.
As to the sky, I wanted to keep it all Pittsburgh.  I have plenty of shots with sky.  So, it will be ethical to 'correct' this Pittsburgh sky with another Pittsburgh sky from the same area on the same day.  Right?
All the object removals went fine, even the big 35 MPH sign.  Very happy with that.
To mask out the sky, I used On One.

The process in On One was less than ten minutes, where if I had used PS, it would have been considerably longer.
When I added the Pittsburgh sky, I still needed to work on the overall light levels.  For that I used Photomatix.  I wasn't going for a HDR look, just wanted to bring up the shadow light and colors a bit without looking over saturated.  I used the Photographic filter.
This is the final image.

ISO 100, f/6.3, 1/100 sec, 35 mm

D500/18-200 f/3.5-5.6

The sky part wasn't a slam dunk.  I had to lighten it a bit.  The mask work on the car was a bit tedious, but finally got it to a point where I liked it.  The reflection of the sky in the car windows was interesting.
Although I had to work to get in a spot to take this image, and had to work it a bit in post processing - I was extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

You can take the boy out of Pittsburgh.......

Back from spending a few days in SW Pennsylvania.  There was a certain amount of work to be done at the family house but once the tasks were completed I could spend a few days in Pittsburgh.
Despite the fact I'm from that area, I have no real good pictures of town.  The weather didn't entirely cooperate, but it could have been worse.  Friday's rain was a stopper, but Saturday's cold I could deal with.
There is a very nice overlook that face north looking over the Monongahela River.  That was the target for the day, as well as paying a visit to the Tree of Life Synagogue Memorial in Squirrel Hill.
Saturday was sunny, with passing clouds and cold.  Pittsburgh windy cold.  
My sister, who has many of my photos framed and displayed in her home has no Pittsburgh images from me.  That has to change.
I know there are two 'keepers' from the weekend.  There will be some form of skyline and there is one incline photo.  (That will be posted soon.)
This photo is a panorama.  The finished photo is 35x15 inches.  There are 21 images (portrait) there were blended into this one.  What is shown is the center, there is more on each side, but it didn't format well for display.  For single shot skylines, there isn't as much 'information' in the image, but there also isn't as much panorama distortion.  In the end, it's all about learning.
Side story:  While I was shooting the panorama photographs, there was a couple next to me that said their phone camera was inadequate next to what I was doing and my equipment.  I replied, just depends on what you want.

Panorama 21 Images (Portrait)

I have four sets of skyline panoramas.  This is the most centered one.  There are no huge shadows from the clouds.  And I have all winter to play.  I'm sure there will be more later.