Saturday, January 31, 2009

Cullen's Restaurant

Yesterday was my daughters 13Th birthday! We took her and a friend to Cullen's Restaurant between Clear Lake City and Pasadena. Cullen's is a very upscale restaurant that offers terrific food in a beautifully designed dining space. The round structure suspended from the ceiling is a private dining room! Images of classic works of art are displayed on a rotating basis on large flat-screen displays place around the circumference of the round dining room. I highly recommend the restaurant if you want a unique dining experience in the Clear Lake City / Pasadena area.

Title: "Cullen's"


Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm zoom
Post-processing: Photomatix Pro to combine three exposures (-2,0,+2) into one High Dynamic Range composit > Photoshop CS3 > Duplicate background > Distort Lens Correction to correct some verticle distortion > Crop to remove portion of the photo "lost" by the distortion correction > Topaz Adjust plugin "detail" preset + DeNoise to reduce noise > Brightness / Contrast Adjustment Layer to improve overall brightness > Merge Visible to New Layer > Transform Layer to remove a pole on the left hand side of the photo (by dragging the photo from the left to move the pole out of the image) > Merge Visible to New Layer > Distort Lens Correction Vignette

4 comments:

Larry said...

I like it - cause it's not a pot! :)

Larry J. Patrick said...

What? No restaurant review. What sort of blog is this?

First, CONGRATULATIONS, Emma. You have arrived.

Second, I feel for you Barry; you are about to go where no man really wants to go--teenage children!

Nicely done on the photo. Your treatment gave the restaurant that glitzy feel that I am sure the owners would want.

Barry Armer said...

Thanks Larry and Patrick!

Larry - Hey! Friday's post wasn't a pot either! And neither is Sunday's. You may not want to visit the blog on Monday though! :-)

Patrick - The food and atmosphere at Cullen's is fantastic! As far as the photo goes I was going for a Trey Ratcliff (stuckincustoms.com) type treatment.

Cheers!
Barry

Tim Maguire said...

Wow - awesome shot! Thanks for posting the HDR work flow too.