Modern Architecture at night

[Manfred M]

This is a shot of the student commons building at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Canada. This is where I resumed my formal photographic training from 2010 through to 2015. Night shot taken with the Nikkor f/3.5 24mm shift / tilt lens.

Most of the work in this shot was to manage the different light sources to come up with a decent mixed light image.

[Antonio Correia]

This is very well done, as usual.
The differences in the lights inside and outside you great but you manage to do it perfectly.
What is this in the foreground ? Water yes, but bubbling ? Kind of fountain ?
Cheers ! :9

[Round Tuit]

This is very well done, as usual.
The differences in the lights inside and outside you great but you manage to do it perfectly.
What is this in the foreground ? Water yes, but bubbling ? Kind of fountain ?
Cheers ! :9

Snow

[Antonio Correia]

[Wavelength]

A very nice shot (that heap of snow is reality to be accepted though)

[Manfred M]

What is this in the foreground ? Water yes, but bubbling ? Kind of fountain ?

It's called snow. The image was taken in mid-April, so there was still a tiny bit of that white stuff on the ground. Ottawa gets around 1.8m of snow between late October and early April.

[Tom Barry]

Masterful handling of a complex lighting situation.

[Digital]

Manfred, very nice photograph.


Bruce

[DanK]

Superb handling of the mixed lighting, but I find the pile of old snow a tad distracting. I’d probably burn it more.


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[Manfred M]

Superb handling of the mixed lighting, but I find the pile of old snow a tad distracting. I’d probably burn it more.


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Thanks Dan - how's this version?

[mugge]

I prefer the second version also. That is a very good image given the bad lighting.

Is this image straight out of the box or did you do some photoshopping to master the bad lighting?

[royent]

I think I prefer the first

[DanK]

Much better, IMHO


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[escape]

I think it's amazing how you handled the lighting. Any suggestions for shooting under similar conditions?

[Manfred M]

I prefer the second version also. That is a very good image given the bad lighting.

Is this image straight out of the box or did you do some photoshopping to master the bad lighting?

I don't have the raw data anymore, it got lost some time ago. I reworked an old jpeg.

This is the image I started with. The siding is stainless steel, so the blue is due to mixed lighting.

[Manfred M]

I think it's amazing how you handled the lighting. Any suggestions for shooting under similar conditions?

The advice I always give - get an exposure that captures the entire tonal range so that one has enough material to work with in post. The original was taken before the time where I spent most of my effort in local adjustments. The original shot probably had about 5 minutes of work in it. The updated version, more like 15 minutes.

It is impossible to get mixed light colours looking right straight out of the camera.

I broke the image down into four major zones and adjusted the exposure and colours in:

1. Sky;

2. Siding;

3. Building interior; and

4. Everything else.

Those areas then had local adjustments; luminance, mid-tone contrast or selective desaturation of a colour channel applied to them. This is an image I will never do a large print of, so I could be quick and dirty in my retouch. You can see the Photoshop layers in this screenshot.

[xpatUSA]

The advice I always give - get an exposure that captures the entire tonal range so that one has enough material to work with in post ...

... assuming that the scene DR is equal to or less than the camera DR, of course.

[Manfred M]

... assuming that the scene DR is equal to or less than the camera DR, of course.

Unless one uses one of the multiple exposure techniques; HDRI, Exposure Fusion or manual blending. All would work well in a scene like this. With modern cameras and their 14+ ev dynamic range, these techniques are no longer as important as they were 10 years ago.

[xpatUSA]

Unless one uses one of the multiple exposure techniques; HDRI, Exposure Fusion or manual blending. All would work well in a scene like this. With modern cameras and their 14+ ev dynamic range, these techniques are no longer as important as they were 10 years ago.

Still important to me when I use the Sigma with it's about 9EV dynamic range.

Interestingly, about the best raw DR I get is about 7EV (opened in RawDigger) so maybe something goes on between the capture and the writing to card ...

[Jim A]

Am a great fan of architecture and am slowly learning about light. I do really like this image very much, Manfred. Though having fetish for manipulating images, I would have right away done something about the snow (probably substitute grass or whatever) - but why do so in this image? ----- could be that I have learned something