One bridge at night...

[golympio]

Hi everyone!

I made this picture yesterday night, being bored out of my mind I went out around midnight to shoot some pictures of my town (which by the way is completely deserted by 9pm, so where I took this picture I was a little jumpy at times, surrounded by bushes and crackling twigs with my feet and tripod in the water and my expensive camera on top of it..).

Here's the before shot:


Shot data: 11mm, 20s @ f/5.6

It's the best overall exposure I got, the trees in front are properly exposed, at least well enough, we can see some stars in the sky, but as you can see the bridge and the tower in the background are waaaayyy blown out.

To be fair, as I wandered through the empty streets of Crest with my tripod over my shoulder, I knew this picture was going to be a HDR picture, and I wanted to have the moon on the shot.
Problem is, the moon was up allright, but in the opposite direction. Being the lazy photographer that I am I would not wait 6 months for the moon to be there at the right time, so beforehand I pulled out my telephoto lens and took a picture of the moon at 250mm.

Having taken pictures of the moon before, and knowing from all the scientific reviews I had read of the 55-250mm IS lens that its optimum aperture is f/8, I set the aperture to f/8, and took the picture with 1/400s at ISO 200. I got a nice moon about 450 pixels across that was exactly what I needed.
So that's the first step.

Then I clambered down to the actual place where I took the picture from, set down my tripod, cable release, and fired off 8 shots in RAW, at f/5.6, from about 0,5s for the darkest one (exposed for the highlighted parts of the bridge and tower) to 1 min 20s (the trees are clearer, but the stars are trailed).
That's the second step.

When I got home, I slept.
That's the most important step

Then today I imported the pictures in Lightroom with my preset set to "defringe" the CA only, and exported all of them to Photomatix in TIFF 16 bits for HDR combination and tone mapping.

As only 2 pictures are allowed I can't share here the result of the tonemapping, but you can see it on my flickr photostream.

To me it looked a little band, with no clear separation between the different elements of the picture, and there's a nasty haze around the street lights and the tower, I guess this comes from diffusion in the lens (then maybe I'm wrong, I didn't major in optics) but it kind of ruins the sky.

So I took it to Photoshop, and first corrected this by using a curves layer with a mask to select only the sky.
Unfortunately this almost got rid of the stars, so to be sure I cloned most of the out.

Then I added the moon on a new layer, as it was just the right size for me (of course much bigger than in real life) I did not have to resize it. Then I adjusted its color with a curves adjustment layer, dialed up the reds and greens a notch, and tweaked to have this color that the moon picks up when it gets lower in the sky.
Then I set the blending mode to superposition, positionned the moon, and applied a fusion mask to put it behind the tower.

Next I pressed CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E to copy a flattened version of all that to a new layer, and applied a Topaz Adjust filter to it. I think I took the "spicify" preset, and tweaked it a little bit.

Of course the effect was way too much, it looked unrealistic but that's what I wanted, I just dialed down the opacity of the layer, and it looked about right at about 60%.

Now, back in Lightroom I fixed up the color of the tower, which was too bright and orange, applied a tad more clarity (I love that one) and sharpening, and done!

Here's the result: I recommend downloading the large size or original size and viewing on black.


Now, what I wanted to do is add the reflection of the moon in the river, but I have no clue on how to do it so that it looks realistic, as the surface of the water is pretty disturbed. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Anyway, I hope this helps, that that wasn't too boring or longish, when I began photography a few months ago I found every "how-to" a big help.

[Quo Fan]

I would put the moon a little higher in the sky.

Other than that, I normally don't like HDR shots, but you did well with this one.

[XpressionPhotography]

Very nice and vibrant...learned a lot about HDR production...Im just getting into HDR. I like this a lot though.

[GothamCity]

Wow! I think it looks great,I love HDR photos

[i_am_beam]

I agree that the moon should be a little higher in the sky. If it were there it would probably be redder in color (I think). It just sticks out a little. I think the picture would be awesome without it. The water on the rocks is really cool.

[Serephinex]

Fantastic. I've never tried HDR (mostly for lack of a tripod) but I'd love to try it.
This looks really great.

[golympio]

Originally Posted by i_am_beam

I agree that the moon should be a little higher in the sky. If it were there it would probably be redder in color (I think). It just sticks out a little. I think the picture would be awesome without it. The water on the rocks is really cool.

That's exactly what I thought when I processed the picture so I added a reddish-brown tint to the moon. I made some tests, but with more tint I thought it looked kind of dirty.

[Trevinla]

I think you did a great job on the moon - It reminds me of the moon I would see rising at the end of a country road up in Canada... That moon would stretch accross the horizon so far it looked like it was about to hit us - and it was Grey...

for the reflection of the moon, I would try stretching it and placing it on top at a low opacity so you can maintain the water texture... like I said thats what I would TRY...

[fletch]

For me its a little fake looking. I think its because the bridge looks way HDRy, the rest of the shot is fantastic. I would tone down the tonemapping on the bridge to avoid the prominent texture in the brick. As for the moon it looks good the way it is, maybe a touch too low in the sky but being behind the building does give it an extra sense of place, rather than bing stuck on.

As for the relection. I don't think with the moon in its current position you get an actual reflection, just a glint of light, so I wouldn't bother trying to shop it in.