If you've read my travelogues in the past, you know that not only am I a huge fan of Amtrak and passenger trains, but am also an extreme coaster buff as well. After all, roller coasters are trains too right??? I had the privilege of being invited to attend Media Day at Cedar Point this year where I would get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ride a brand-new roller coaster before it opened to the public. Cedar Point brought in several roller coaster enthusiast groups from as far away as Europe for this event along with invited guests (myself included) so that news media outlets could shoot photos and video of this incredible ride (as well as ride it themselves) in action for news broadcasts, newspapers, social media outlets. etc. The event started at 4:00am on Thursday, May 9th so that TV news stations could do live remote broadcasts from the ride site for early morning news programs. The coaster buffs provided the screams to help the coaster "smile for the camer" and began arriving at the park as early as 2:00am!
I personally arrived at 5:00am and the ride was in full operation less-daylight! Of course, you know what this means for me, NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY!!! Included in this section are photos taken of this incredible ride where I once again try to prove that daylight photography is highly overrated!!! A quick note about these photos: These photos use a process known as "Manual HDR" to get the effect you see. This is a process I taught myself while doing night photos of Amtrak over the past few years! I take several photos at different exposures, then use a process in Photoshop called "Layer-Masking" to take the best parts of several photos and overall balance the exposure. Basically, my goal is to make the scene in the photo look the same way your eyes would see it in real life verses how the camera sees it. I'll explain more on the specs of this coaster in the next section of this travelogue. For now, enjoy the photos I took while most of the eastern time zone was probably still asleep!!! |
