Helsinki Cathedral - time blend

[Manfred M]

This is a time blend of three images taken over a period of 100 minutes of the Lutheran Cathedral, in Helsinki, Finland. This is the building that I posted some interior shots of last week on the thread:

Helsinki Cathedral - interior shots

This is the west face of the building and it is being hit by the setting sun. The artificial lights that illuminate the building after sunset have been blended in as well. The building is set up on a hill so getting a shot proved more challenging than I would have liked and unfortunately, my 24mm shift-tilt lens did not come along on this trip.

Another lesson learned. The period between sunset and end of twilight is quite long this far north at this time of year.

[kalyt]

Hi Manfred

Really nice shoot, looks amazing. The building i very well lit. You can really se the blend between the suns light and the artificial light, is well executed. The only thing that distract me is the building in the right corner. It draws my attention because of it's light.

[Donald]

Superbly crafted image. Another one well worth every one of the 100 minutes spent on capturing it. How long was then spent in the digital darkroom creating the final image?

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[John 2]

Absolutely gorgeous and clearly well thought through in the making. Love it.

[Manfred M]

Superbly crafted image. Another one well worth every one of the 100 minutes spent on capturing it. How long was then spent in the digital darkroom creating the final image?

Probably need to add another hour to get there and set up as well as break down the equipment and walk back to the hotel. In PP probably close to another couple of hours, although that should have been cut in half. I played around with the quick selection tool for far too long to make my mask. I changed my approach and used a luminosity mask instead after about an hour.

Another "trick" that worked well was something else I tried for the first time. In order to get the whole cathedral into the shot I had to point the lens up (I had positioned the tripod as far away from the building as I could) so the image had a fair bit of reverse keystoning. Fixing that is fairly straight forward, but one gets a fairly squat looking building.

The last shot I took was a reference shot, with the camera 100% level. I use a L-plate to attach to the tripod, so I shot in vertical orientation, so that got me a lot of of an undistorted building (ignoring the distortions that shooting at 19mm give you). I used that as a reference to resize the final image to ensure that the proportions are correct in the final image. That worked out exactly as planned.