Another few days of damp and overcast weather showed signs of clearing this afternoon as some blue sky became visible. Looking to the south-west, the clouds were thinning, and it looked as though there was a chance of an interesting sunset, so I took a trip over to Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver for a view of the city looking in the direction of the setting sun.
Sadly the clouds remained just a bit too thick to let the sunset colours through, and haze that was almost approaching the levels of a very thin mist was really affecting the view over the water. The overall result was a bit disappointing, so I hung around until the blue hour, as the patterns and texture in the clouds was quite interesting.
This photo was taken about an hour after sunset, and by this time the hazy mist that was spoiling my sunset shot was being lit up by the city lights, causing an unusual and interesting glow. The clouds were also thinning in places, giving some nice impact to the sky. The added glow of the city lights from the mist, along with the 'tree' on top of the Harbour Centre building, gave the scene quite a feel of Christmas!
This is a 4-shot vertical panorama, with each frame being a 7-shot HDR bracket to keep detail in the highlights, shot at 300mm. The exposures ranged from 1/15th to 15 seconds at ISO 800, f/11.
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
If you're interested in any...
this is amazing Alexis, and definitely a fav. Can I ask you (yet another) question please?
When you do HDR shots at a relatively high ISO do you reduce noise (or make any other adjustments for that matter) yourself before putting them through a HDR programme (I use Promatix), and do you put the RAW files through the programme or convert them to JPEG first? I hope that makes sense!
Alexis this is a fine shot. Your method for combining shots sure interests me. This shot as well as others you've taken have a clarity or sharpness to them (clean look) + vibrance.
@jantan Thanks Jan! Yes, when doing HDR work, I do a number of corrections to the files before importing them for HDR processing. I do these by opening the raw files in Adobe Camera Raw (or Lightroom). My corrections typically include:
* Lens corrections (distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration)
* White balance standardisation (I shoot in AWB, so I find it preferable to choose the correct white balance before the HDR processing).
* Noise reduction
I don't do anything that will affect the tones of the photos at this point (contrast, saturation, etc.) I also typically do little or minimal sharpening, preferring to do that after the HDR step.
Once I've made these corrections, I save the files as TIFF files. These contain a bit more information than saving as JPEG files, but take up a huge amount more space, so you may wish to stick to JPEGs, which work virtually as well. These are then imported for HDR processing.
Hope that helps, let me know if you have any questions!
When you do HDR shots at a relatively high ISO do you reduce noise (or make any other adjustments for that matter) yourself before putting them through a HDR programme (I use Promatix), and do you put the RAW files through the programme or convert them to JPEG first? I hope that makes sense!
* Lens corrections (distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration)
* White balance standardisation (I shoot in AWB, so I find it preferable to choose the correct white balance before the HDR processing).
* Noise reduction
I don't do anything that will affect the tones of the photos at this point (contrast, saturation, etc.) I also typically do little or minimal sharpening, preferring to do that after the HDR step.
Once I've made these corrections, I save the files as TIFF files. These contain a bit more information than saving as JPEG files, but take up a huge amount more space, so you may wish to stick to JPEGs, which work virtually as well. These are then imported for HDR processing.
Hope that helps, let me know if you have any questions!