LightningPaul

An image of one the rooms of the former hotel called "The Pallace", in Zeebrugge, Belgium. Now days it are just apartments, mostly for renting.
I was always very intrigued by the big yellow light. Because I never could have a close look I used to think it was a round ventilator with a light behind. One day I was so curious that I decided to take a picture with my telephoto zoom lens. This way I discovered that it was just an ordinary window with back light.

Almost a year ago I posted this image of the same building.


TECH-INFO: I used a tripod to take 5 JPG images. The pictures are shot just after sunset. I merged them (after lens corrections in DxO) into a HDR file and tone-mapped it. I had to do this for covering the rather big dynamic range of light and to amplify all details. In Photoshop I enhanced contrasts and made the white color of the window frames much lighter (it become too gray after tone-mapping, something that happens often) so it looks pretty much white now. For the cracks and extra details in the wall I blended a texture (downloaded from CG Textures) of concrete. I really love the result, it makes the building look much older, worse and even more dramatic. The texture is only applied to the wall, not to the window or white shutters below. At the end some vignetting is added.