Otto Berkeley
Vista
On a recent morning, London's skyline became buried in fog. The temperature had been hovering above zero and a light layer of frost had developed overnight across Primrose Hill and Regent's Park. The frost became more visible as night turned to blue hour, while the cityscape became increasingly obscured in early-morning mist, with barely a silhouette St Paul's and the Walkie Talkie visible, and with only a faint outline of the Docklands in the distance. A sliver of warm light gradually appeared on the horizon, turning from deep red to vibrant pink, and finally to brilliant orange as the sun emerged from behind the city's buildings.
My aim with this image was to capture several parts of what was a chilly but remarkable experience, from the pre-dawn glow of the lamps across Primrose Hill to the moment when, minutes before the sun appeared, a glimpse of fiery light could be seen between Tower 42 and the Leadenhall Building. I began shooting long before dawn when I was the only person at the top of Primrose Hill, but by the time the sun rose I'd been joined by fellow photographer Peter Li as well as half a dozen other photographers, joggers and dog-walkers, all of whom were captivated by the spectacle.
There was something magical about the city lights and the lamps across the parkland, so I began by capturing these and later using a combination of blend modes and gradient masks in Photoshop to combine them with a series of bracketed images that I captured as the sun appeared. While luminosity masking would usually be a straightforward method of isolating light across the frame and targeting my brighter exposures to the cityscape and my darker exposures to the sky, the fog on the horizon and the faint early-morning light meant an equal amount of midtones across both the cityscape and the sky, and the challenge with this image was separating these and refining the luminosity masks until the cityscape could be edited without affecting the sky. It would have been easy to use darker exposures across the image and to simply raise the shadows and exposure along the lower half of the frame, but I wanted as clean and noise-free a finish as possible across the parkland, as well as a smooth and balanced transition of light between the obscured cityscape and the brilliant sky.
With the exposures from nearly two hours of shooting blended, the colour-grading process was a fairly straightforward process, with only minor adjustments to emphasise the tones that were already there. I used Curves, Colour Balance and Gradient Map adjustments to bring out the golden tones in the sky and the cold blue across the cityscape, as well as Hue/Saturation and Selective Colour adjustments to add a hint of cyan and green to the blue in the foreground, which I felt helped to bring out the frost and chill of the parkland. I also applied a low-opacity Exposure adjustment to the shadows in the foreground to soften the contrast among the trees, which seemed to focus the buildings and the light on the horizon as the central points of interest.
Inside Nik's Colour Efex Pro, I added a small amount of the Pro Contrast and Tonal Contrast filters to the buildings in order to give them a little extra definition against the sky, but I was mindful about how much of this to apply because the low visibility of the scene is what made the image unusual for me. I liked how, on this misty and freezing morning, only the tips of the highest buildings on the horizon were clearly visible, and how, minutes before the sun rose and the fog began to vanish, there was a fleeting but fantastic sense of drama across the city.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.
Vista
On a recent morning, London's skyline became buried in fog. The temperature had been hovering above zero and a light layer of frost had developed overnight across Primrose Hill and Regent's Park. The frost became more visible as night turned to blue hour, while the cityscape became increasingly obscured in early-morning mist, with barely a silhouette St Paul's and the Walkie Talkie visible, and with only a faint outline of the Docklands in the distance. A sliver of warm light gradually appeared on the horizon, turning from deep red to vibrant pink, and finally to brilliant orange as the sun emerged from behind the city's buildings.
My aim with this image was to capture several parts of what was a chilly but remarkable experience, from the pre-dawn glow of the lamps across Primrose Hill to the moment when, minutes before the sun appeared, a glimpse of fiery light could be seen between Tower 42 and the Leadenhall Building. I began shooting long before dawn when I was the only person at the top of Primrose Hill, but by the time the sun rose I'd been joined by fellow photographer Peter Li as well as half a dozen other photographers, joggers and dog-walkers, all of whom were captivated by the spectacle.
There was something magical about the city lights and the lamps across the parkland, so I began by capturing these and later using a combination of blend modes and gradient masks in Photoshop to combine them with a series of bracketed images that I captured as the sun appeared. While luminosity masking would usually be a straightforward method of isolating light across the frame and targeting my brighter exposures to the cityscape and my darker exposures to the sky, the fog on the horizon and the faint early-morning light meant an equal amount of midtones across both the cityscape and the sky, and the challenge with this image was separating these and refining the luminosity masks until the cityscape could be edited without affecting the sky. It would have been easy to use darker exposures across the image and to simply raise the shadows and exposure along the lower half of the frame, but I wanted as clean and noise-free a finish as possible across the parkland, as well as a smooth and balanced transition of light between the obscured cityscape and the brilliant sky.
With the exposures from nearly two hours of shooting blended, the colour-grading process was a fairly straightforward process, with only minor adjustments to emphasise the tones that were already there. I used Curves, Colour Balance and Gradient Map adjustments to bring out the golden tones in the sky and the cold blue across the cityscape, as well as Hue/Saturation and Selective Colour adjustments to add a hint of cyan and green to the blue in the foreground, which I felt helped to bring out the frost and chill of the parkland. I also applied a low-opacity Exposure adjustment to the shadows in the foreground to soften the contrast among the trees, which seemed to focus the buildings and the light on the horizon as the central points of interest.
Inside Nik's Colour Efex Pro, I added a small amount of the Pro Contrast and Tonal Contrast filters to the buildings in order to give them a little extra definition against the sky, but I was mindful about how much of this to apply because the low visibility of the scene is what made the image unusual for me. I liked how, on this misty and freezing morning, only the tips of the highest buildings on the horizon were clearly visible, and how, minutes before the sun rose and the fog began to vanish, there was a fleeting but fantastic sense of drama across the city.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.