Lutetia Parisiorum (HDR)

Lutetia Parisiorum (HDR)

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Before and after

Making-of

Pics to play with

The story of this photo:
Did you know?… “Lutetia Parisiorum” was the roman name of a settlement at the river Seine that was dated back to 4200 BC by archeologists. The area was conquered in 52 BC by the Romans and got this name. Today, the place is better known under the name “Paris”. In 2009 and 2010, Paris has been ranked among the three most important and influential cities in the world. It produces more than a quarter of the gross domestic product of France. Of course, the monument that you see here is the most famous in Paris and, in fact, in the whole world.

I am telling you this to gloss over the fact that this is probably the millionth picture of the Eiffel Tower uploaded on this day alone. It was taken from the standard spot and does not present the most original of all possible angles.

Of course, sending a guy in a balloon up to create the clouds left of the tower was the real challenge here. With his secrete apparatus for making clouds, he tried three times before it would come out like this.

Enjoy!

Take a look at my “HDR Cookbook”! It contains some more information on my techniques.

How it was shot:
> Taken handheld [details]
> Three exposures (0, +2, +2ev)
> Camera: Nikon D90
> Lens: Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-200mm 1:3,5-5,6G ED VR
> Details can be found here

How it was tone-mapped:
> 32bit HDR images created from 3 JPEG files
> Semi-automatic deghosting on the people in the foreground
> Tone-mapping: Photomatix Pro 4.0 (Detail Enhancer)

How it was post-processed:
> Post-processing was done in Photoshop
> Topaz Adjust on the entire image to get back the colors and the details [details]
> Topaz Denoise on the entire image (more aggressively on the sky) [details]
> Topaz Infocus on the entire image for sharpening
> Saturation and levels layers on the tower (slight desaturation and brightening)
> Evening out the luminance on the tower with a levels layer and a gradient mask [details]
> Photo filter (brown) on the tower to give it back some of its original color
> Saturation layer on the sky (master)
> Saturation layer on the clouds (slight desaturation)
> Sharpening using the high-pass filter [details]
> Vignette effect using a masked fill layer [details]
> Watermarking (cloudmarking a shall say)

Any comments, feedback or criticisms are highly welcome! Thanks for viewing!

Posts you may also like:

HDR Cookbook – Before and After: Lutetia Parisiorum (HDR) Chinese Reflections (HDR) The Docks – Palermo, Italy (HDR) La Dame de Fer (HDR)