Twin Tracks Arriving and Departing Final

The Shot

This is Shepherds Bush, one of the few underground stations in London where trains travelling in opposite directions can be caught from the same platform which makes for a great photo with a wide angle lens. I think the only other stations are 2 on the Northern Line at Clapham.

I had to wait 15 minutes to catch 2 trains moving at the same time. I was lucky that a man came and stood in the right place and very still for the ¼ second exposure.

Due to a central barrier for most of the platform this picture can only be taken from the far end of the platform.

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

A standard HDR does not work too well due to the train movement between images and different colours and patterns on the trains in each image. I used the last of the 3 exposures and used the RAW file to create 2 additional exposures.

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.

The straighten tool was used to to correct the slight angle in the original.

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 using the brightness/contrast adjustment layer and using a layer mask to reduce brightness only in the roof to bring attention more on the trains.

Vibrance adjustment layer was increased by 40 points.

Hue saturation adjustment layer was used to increase red and blue saturation a little on the trains.

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 44 amount and 44 radius. A mask was used to partly exclude the effect from highlights.

The clone brush was used for tidy up and especially to remove the large blown out highlight from the lights in the roof.

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

Twin Tracks Arriving and Departing Original

Tonemapped image

Twin Tracks Arriving and Departing Tonemapped

Final Image

Twin Tracks Arriving and Departing Final

Edwin Jones