LightningPaul

Not far from where I live you have this nice odd looking building. During the day it is still peaceful but at night it attracts lightning: see here and of course here. Most rooms are empty but can be rent. Many windows are closed or covered with curtains but sometimes you can clearly see what is inside. As you can notice, this building is starting to get a bit older.


TECH-INFO: that day I was walking outside to test my new 35mm macro lens. I already took a bunch of close up macro shots of the walls. I plan to use them for textures to mix in my images. I saw potential for another nice image for my photo blog. I had no tripod with me but anyway I shot five JPGs with a stop difference all hand held. Photoshop aligned and merged them into a HDR file which I tone mapped in Photomatrix Pro which is always fun. I did no corrections in DxO Optics Pro since it does not know my new lens.
Then I reloaded the tone mapped image in Photoshop to have even more fun. First I performed perspective corrections because I don't like lines which are slightly falling over. Using various masked adjustment layers, like curves and selective color tools, I enhanced the walls and the windows. Finally, besides some added vignetting, I mixed one of my bluestone close ups (of that same building) with this image which resulted into this nice crack in the wall. Using the burning tool I had to darken the crack to let it look more realistic. It was not easy but the result is not bad for the first time. Please let me know what you think of it.
So actually I used six pictures of that building for this image: five for HDR and one for the crack texture :-)