Mysterious Door – Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia (HDR)

The story of this photo:
This was shot in Sidi Bou Said, a small town near Tunis. All buildings in this town are white with blue windows and doors, except for a couple of doors that are green and red like this one. I have no idea why that is. Probably people got bored from the blue colors.

Personally, I like the light and the contrast in this photo. It was shot mid-day. So the structures in the walls are really emphasized. Interestingly, the left wall is lit by the sun from above while the right wall is lit by the reflections of the stairs and the left wall. So on the right side, the light comes from below.

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, +2 ev) autobracketed and merged to get and HDR
> 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 tonemapped:
> HDR creation using Photoshop (better alignment of source photos)
> HDR creation and tonemapping using Photomatix Pro 3.1 (Detail Enhancer)
> Saved as 16bit TIF

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 [details]
> Saturation layer on the door (increased master)
> Levels layer on the door (brightening)
> Levels layer on the sky (brightening)
> Levels layer globally (increased contrast)
> Watermarking
> Vignette effect using a masked fill layer [details]
> Sharpening using the high-pass filter [details]

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