Chris_Malcolm
Sunset behind St Andrew's House
Not a planned shot, I just happened to be passing at the time. I liked the idea of capturing the colours of the sunset clouds while standing in the shadow of St Andrew's House, concealing the luminous ferocity of the sun behind the building, and having the shaded end of the building in the photograph. It's the headquarters of the devolved administration of Scotland. In style it's a combination of art deco and streamline moderne, with touches of fascist rationalism.
I've only taken a few sunset photographs, enough to know that the huge dynamic range is a problem, especially if you want to see some shaded detail. A quick experimental shot confirmed the problem, blowing out the bright clouds while the facade of the building was still concealed in black shadow.
This is the kind of problem HDR was made for, and happily my current camera does rather nice in-camera handheld HDR. I set it to its max of a 6 stop difference over 3 shots. The bright clouds are still a bit blown, and I had to lift the shadows a bit to get the above effect, so I suspect a wider racketing range and post-porcessed HDR would have been better.
Original: DSC07795_ptX
Sunset behind St Andrew's House
Not a planned shot, I just happened to be passing at the time. I liked the idea of capturing the colours of the sunset clouds while standing in the shadow of St Andrew's House, concealing the luminous ferocity of the sun behind the building, and having the shaded end of the building in the photograph. It's the headquarters of the devolved administration of Scotland. In style it's a combination of art deco and streamline moderne, with touches of fascist rationalism.
I've only taken a few sunset photographs, enough to know that the huge dynamic range is a problem, especially if you want to see some shaded detail. A quick experimental shot confirmed the problem, blowing out the bright clouds while the facade of the building was still concealed in black shadow.
This is the kind of problem HDR was made for, and happily my current camera does rather nice in-camera handheld HDR. I set it to its max of a 6 stop difference over 3 shots. The bright clouds are still a bit blown, and I had to lift the shadows a bit to get the above effect, so I suspect a wider racketing range and post-porcessed HDR would have been better.
Original: DSC07795_ptX