Natural History Museum Staircase to Hogwarts Final

The Shot

This is a shot from my last day trip to London in September and a visit to the Natural History Museum. The main hall is great for wide angle shots and in this case using my new fisheye. I got this one during a brief break in the stream of people using the staircase.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens at f8.

Photomatix

Outputted in Photomatix to Detail Enhancer. Click the Camera name top right on flickr for this image for Exif details and the settings used.

Photoshop

First the minus 2 EV layer was copied in, excluded with a black layer mask and then a white brush used to bring it in and tone down highlight areas.

Detail was brought back in with Topaz adjust with vibrant presets group with crisp preset with adjustments. Some areas, mainly highlights were excluded from the effect by applying Topaz on a duplicate layer with a layer mask.

General adjustments in levels to enhance with a layer mask used to exclude highlights.

Brightness was reduced further in some areas using the brightness/contrast adjustment layer using a layer mask.

Vibrance adjustment layer was increased by 41 points.

Hue saturation adjustment layer was used with a layer mask to reduce blue saturation mainly in the stairs which had become over blue from the processing.

A second hue saturation adjustment layer was used with a layer mask to bring up yellows and increase warmth in the Hall and roof.  

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

First duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and a little sharpening

Second duplicate layer with mask to apply extra sharpening and contrast with low amount and high radius using Unsharp mask (Clarity Effect) The settings were 46 amount and 46 radius. A mask was used to partly exclude the effect from highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the middle of the 3 exposures. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Natural History Museum Staircase to Hogwarts Original

Tonemapped image

Natural History Museum Staircase to Hogwarts Tonemapprd

Final Image

Natural History Museum Staircase to Hogwarts Final

Edwin Jones