Cargo Ship on the Willamete River at Night by Stoney Vintson

It is difficult to capture cargo vessels from this bridge because of the number of exposures that are required to capture the dynamic range. I learned not to be so concerned about the longer exposures such as 21 seconds because brief disturbances do not effect the image as much. I used five exposures per position to capture this and used APG 2.5 beta and then Ptgui 8.3.10 to render. I am also able to fuse the exposures using the batch mode of Photomatix, HDR Expose, Picturenaut, enfuse, or tufuse and then stitch with Gigapan Stitch. I had trouble controlling the highlights while capturing the texture of the side of the cargo ship. One of the most important textures is the texture of the cargo ship, but I lost the detail near the cranes. So, it will be necessary to use tone mapping instead of fusion or mask problematic areas of exposures so that they do not effect the weighting matrices when using fusion.

This location on the bridge where I captured this is the best location to achieve a good angle and elevation. The problem is that the bridge is disturbed by the frequent light rail trains ( less disturbance ), buses, and speeding automobiles. Patience is required ; )