Famous site which MANY people have taken photos of already, however as I a photographer, I wanted my own shot done by me.
The first night in Hong Kong was pretty clear weather, however me and my family were not keen on venturing out after a long flight, so we just rested. The second day it was mildly foggy, and I took a few shots from various parts the viewing area for the Peak, basically wherever I could squeeze in as it was crazy busy.
My travel Tripod was not tall enough to reach over the railing, so I could not do a long exposure. Also, it would've been really difficult to get a Tripod in close to the edge with the amount of people that were around.
I had to kick up the ISO higher than I would have liked, as this image I want to print so I wanted the cleanest file possible. However most DSLR's can have a pretty clean file at ISO800, which is what I shot it at.
As I'm shooting a fairly wide angle, I could have a slower shutter to bring in more light, although a Tripod would've been ideal. Rested on the edge of the ledge, I managed to get a steady 1sec shot.
As I'm not after a shallow depth of field and wanted to make sure I got a sharp image, I would've ideally liked to have had the aperture between f/7.1-f/9. But to allow light, I had to open up a bit more to f/5.6.
Nikon D800 + 14-24mm f/2.8 @ ISO800, 1sec, f/5.6
Conditions were not ideal, as before, it was foggy, very crowded, and no tripod, so this shot above is straight out of the camera.
All I mainly cared for was a sharp image, as I knew the 36.3mp would give me some room to crop and re-compose later, and get a decent base Exposure as a lot can be recovered when shooting RAW.
As you can see, the grassy areas around the bottom corners of the image are very under exposed. There was absolutely no light shining directly on there. Light could've been pulled out of those areas if I had a tripod and just left it as a long exposure to drag out the Greens. However, as before, tough conditions to shoot in. I had people literally queing up behind me to get this view, impatient people slightly barging me... so I couldn't leave the shot open for more than 1sec...
In addition, if I pulled the Greens from the Trees, the building lights would completely be blown out, that's the issue with Dynamic Range in most cameras.
In addition, if I pulled the Greens from the Trees, the building lights would completely be blown out, that's the issue with Dynamic Range in most cameras.
The weather was pretty foggy, creating that white mist up in the sky of the image, and it was emphasised further by the lights off the building.
Where this image is acceptable as a holiday snap, I really wanted something that would pop off the screen and get some attention. Seeing as the intention was to print it on a canvass for my wall.
I went back to the Peak the next day to re-take the shot, but this time when I re-take the shots, I wanted to Bracket the images. I wanted to Bracket the images with 3 exposures, + and - 1stop to then merge together as an HDR image.
I'm generally not a big fan of HDR for certain shots, nor am I any good at creating a good HDR image, so I was apprehensive with making it a HDR. However, as you can see above, from the darks to the lights, the balance is off.
I went back the next day, took the shots, and then come back to my laptop to find that my Photoshop CS5.1 cannot read the RAW files from my new D800. :S
To get the best out of a RAW file, you must merge RAW files. I then had to open them up in Lightroom, Export them as JPGs, and from the JPGs I made a HDR image.
As before, not the best at making HDR images, but the result is below.
There is a better balance, but the image just looks artificial.
This was also a quick edit on a slow laptop, but I got the idea of what the final outcome would look like, so I thought it's best to just use a file and edit via Lightroom.
I then took the image from the first night into Lightroom, and colour tweaked the image quite a bit. The first night was less foggy, and it was later in the night so more lights were on in the buildings.
Nikon D800 + 14-24mm f/2.8 @ ISO800, 1sec, f/5.6
With the building lights being white, and the road lights being tungsten lighting, the cameras AutoWB made the image very orange. I had seen a video from the guys at SLR Lounge, and their video inspired me to edit the image this way.
I cooled down the image to give it a more real look, to how our eyes would see. I then took it down a more and cooled it further to give it a dark Blue sky. Added a lot of Clarity to emphasise the edges of the buildings, and increased the exposure on the two bottom corners. I still wanted to leave it dark, as when you look from the Peak, it is still dark, I just wanted to make it obvious it was trees rather than two black areas on the image.
I have also cropped the image to change its Ratio. It's a fairly wide City Scape, and do to a Panoramic, I would definitely need a Tripod. So I cropped down the top and bottom to give focus to the centre of the image, and went down to 16x9 (as I might have this as my PS3 Wallpaper), and 16x10 for my PC Monitor.
Most likely I'll keep the 16x9 Crop for the Canvass also, but I'll have to see what sizes are on order or if its fully customisable.
If anyone who reads this knows a good place to print Canvasses, please do give me a shout! ;)
@LeoHoangPhoto
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