LightningPaul

Image taken in Europa college in Brugge, Belgium. See this picture for a view when leaning out of the window. The man at the window was photographing that beautiful view. The one at the left was waiting for his shots. The third man was taking this image.


TECH-INFO: the main problem here is that the light of outside was very bright because of the sun and white walls of houses. On the other hand the attic was rather dark. To bridge this range I had to take 9 pictures. After merging them into a HDR file I tone-mapped them twice. Once with Photomatrix which gave a very poppy result. And a second time with Picturenaut (using the photoreceptor algorithm) which yielded a very natural but rather flat result. In Photoshop I mixed both tone-mapped images. This ended in an image which is (to me) looking good, strong and natural. All tones are present, something that was not possible at all with a single image (even in RAW). Finally I improved the contrast and a bit the colors.
FYI, the focus distance is 0,47m, to make sure the man at the left is sharp. Thanks to f/11the houses and church are pretty well in focus too.

This images demonstrates the power and need of HDR techniques in certain cases.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention a big BRAVO for those two photographers in front of the lens. They really didn't move at all while taking the nine pictures needed for HDR.