London City Hall Monolith Final

Another shot from my last day trip to London early in November. There are 5 of these black schulptures in the plaza round City Hall on the South Bank. All are by Fiona Banner and are intended to represent vastly increased in size full stops in various typefaces. Fasinating, I will now look on these in a new light. The black paint is also the same shade as that used for London Taxis.

The picture was taken with a Tripod with a Sony A700 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens at f8. There were 3 raw images 2EV spacing for HDR. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Photomatix

The HDR was created using Photmatix and tonemapped using tone compressor photographic preset for the most natural look and the least noise.

Photoshop

First the minus 2 EV layer was brought back in, excluded with a layer mask and then a brush used to bring it back in for some highlight areas especially the Tower of London and the far bank to bring in more detail.

Detail was brought back in with Topaz adjust with vibrant presets group with Detail 2 preset with adjustments. The sky was excluded from the effect with a layer mask and brush for a more natural look.

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

Vibrance increased by 37 points.

Slight decrease in Saturation Blues for a more natural look on City Hall.

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 35 amount and 35 radius. A mask was used to partly exclude the effect from highlights.

Healing Brush CS5 content Aware and Clone brush used to remove 2 cranes from the background on the right.

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

London City Hall Monolith Original

Tonemapped image

London City Hall Monolith tonemapped

Final Image

London City Hall Monolith Final

For licences see London City Hall Monolith

Edwin Jones