andrew.haysom Loc: Melbourne, Australia

Under the rail bridge, near the corner of Spencer and Flinders St, Melbourne. Looking up at the magnificent Eureka Tower.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Beautiful! Great use of HDR. Can you give us some info on how you did that - number of images, etc?

andrew.haysom Loc: Melbourne, Australia

Jerry, sure can.

Canon EOS 6D, EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens @50mm, f/8.0, ISO 800.

Five exposures -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 - on tripod, shutter speeds ranged from 1.6 sec to 25 sec.

Workflow was;
- Use DPP to correct lens distortion
- Open RAWs in PSE 11, use Topaz Denoise to remove noise and save as TIFFs.
- Merge in Photomatix, "Natural" preset.
- Perspective adjust in DxO Optics Pro.
- Clean up artifacts in sky in PSE11.
- Apply Topaz Adjust "Spicify" to layer @40% opacity.
- Save as JPEG.

tradio Loc: Oxford, Ohio

Nice work!

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Interesting spread of exposure times. It's nice having all those programs and knowing how to use them. Having them is one thing, but being able to use them properly is quite another. :thumbup:

conkerwood

What I like about your work Andrew is that one look is not sufficient. You have to spend a lot of time wandering through the little corners picking out all of the details. What I do find fascinating is that you are able to control the intensity of the very bright lights so that even thought they are obviously blown, its a 'controlled blown' which really adds to the atmosphere. Its a bit like feedback in music. Most times feedback is an annoying musically destructive fault in sound systems but when skilled musicians harness it then it can be used to add another creative dimension. So the list of good stuff for this pic obviously starts with the composition, strong leading lines that take your eye both under and over the bridge, really well done. Focus and DOF just right and obvious care with the set up and PP as the alignment of the bracketed shots is just about as good as it gets. And your HDR processing is perfect for the subject matter. In short yet another great pic of your beloved Melbourne. But it wouldn't be me if I didn't have a couple of nits. Firstly there seems to be some residual lens/perspective distortion after whatever correction you have done. The brown wall on the left for example both curves and leans to the left as does the furthermost vertical electrical wire support and the Eureka tower itself. The nearer wire support is spot on but by the time you move over to the top right hand corner the vertical there and the railings slope to the right. But minor stuff and easy to fix. My only other thought probably wanders into style and taste a little. I know you have a real aversion to noise as do I and I have a fair idea of your workflow and the steps you take to reduce noise but I think there are a couple of areas where this has resulted in a loss of detail. Have a look at the brown vertical in the top right, rather than surface detail you have ended up with the smudginess that sometimes happens after noise reduction. And there are a couple of other areas where this has occurred. But as we know its often a balancing act between noise and details because no matter how good the software is you sometimes have to accept a compromise. But for me in this case it might have been worthwhile doing slightly less noise reduction in certain areas in order to retain just a little more detail admittedly at the cost of a tad more noise. (ie layer mask then paint in the areas where you want less noise reduction etc) But thats me and my taste / style, I'm not you. Just some thoughts, but doesn't change the fact that its a stunning pic. BTW love the star bursts on the red signal lights, very very effective.

Keep them coming Andrew, you make Melbourne beautiful, or to be more accurate, you bring out the beauty thats already there.

Peter

andrew.haysom Loc: Melbourne, Australia

Thanks for the kind comments, and the astute, as always, critique.

Firstly, an admission. The location was a steal from another Flickr photo from 2009 that my photo walk partner found and we decided we would seek out and see if it was still viable after four years (he knows I have a Eureka Tower fetish).

Second, I agree 100% with the "layering" or partial noise reduction. I've started to do this a bit with my bird images, ie masking out the bird, removing noise from the background, but for more complex scenes like this I need to improve my masking skills.

The other good bits I think are more attributable to the camera and the software, than me!

LoneRangeFinder Loc: Left field

Wonderful image. My only "objection" is that obstruction that intrudes on the view of the Eureka Tower-- But it's there, so c'est la'vie....

Bamboo Loc: South Carolina

Beautiful composition you really captured the artistry of the structures. Your work as always blows me away.

Chinaman Loc: Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Hi Andrew
Although an Adelaidean, I confess I love Melbourne. I have more shots of Melbourne than I have of Adelaide. So much for the traditional Adelaide-Melbourne War.
As usual, I ditto what Peter has said. And to be picky myself, I would darken the overall picture more, especially the bottom half, to give it a night feel. The lack of people, concrete, bricks, graffitti, and 'urbaness' of the area need a more dark and scary atmosphere to match. That's how I would see, feel and edit this image.

SoHillGuy Loc: Washington

I like your HDR work Andrew. The bright lights at the street level are blown out, especially the white bar of light on the left. To bad there is nothing to clone from to eliminate the bar of light.

UP-2-IT Loc: RED STICK, LA

Well done, great results, good to see that you got all the details.

Merlin1300 Loc: New England, But Now & Forever SoTX

Great Comp !!
Love the interplay of the horizontals and verticals with the curve of the elevated roadway - -

GC likes NIKON Loc: East Greenwich, Rhode Island

I am very new to this Andrew an trying to figure out where to begin. Thanks for the above data, but what "Mode setting" is you canon set at M - Manual , P, A, S etc ???

andrew.haysom Loc: Melbourne, Australia

GC,
For HDR bracketing I always have the camera in AV (Aperture priority) mode, I think that's A on a Nikon. For HDR shots you need to keep the aperture constant so that the depth of field remains constant for each shot.