London 2012 Flowers at the Olympics Final

On Thursday 9 August I got to visit the Olympic Park. The first and second rounds of tickets distributed in lotteries were vastly oversubscribed and my applications for the Velodrome got nowhere. However this year when extra tickets came up for some events I got a ticket for the BMX, men’s quarter finals.

During my visit I also explored the Park. Apart from the beautiful architecture of the various Stadiums the River Lee and various canals run through the Park. The bank sides have been beautifully landscaped with wild flowers as in this shot along the bank of the canal running past the Olympic Stadium. This canal bank path was about the quietest part of the Park, away from the “maddening crowd”

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing for HDR. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

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

Detail was brought back in with Topaz adjust with Vibrant preset group, Boost Preset.

Vibrance increased 20 points.

Hue Saturation blues used to reduce blue saturation a little, 10 points.

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.

Clone tool used to tidy up the sky and remove a distracting post on the right.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original, then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

 Original at 0EV

London 2012 Flowers at the Olympics Original

 After Photomatix Detail Enhancer Tonemapped Method

London 2012 Flowers at the Olympics Tonemapped

 Final Image

London 2012 Flowers at the Olympics Final

Note that as this image was taken on private property with strict restrictions on the professional use of images in the Ticket Conditions this image is not available for sale.

Edwin Jones