City Hall So Next Century FinalCity Hall So Next Century Final

This is my first shot to be processed from this year’s London Open House on 21^st and 22 September. City Hall is on the south bank of the Thames near Tower Bridge and was my first visit.

The amazing spiral staircase inside is the centrepiece of this building. I had been to it in 2011 but wanted to try out my fisheye lens on it. I was surprised that the queues were quite light. I arrived an hour before opening but very few people were there and when I came out there was no queue. Last year there was apparently a long wait. The picture shows how incredible this place is inside.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix detail enhancer with custom settings

Photoshop

The 0EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A brush was then used on the sky to brighten this and cut out the muddy look.

Topaz Adjust Vibrant gritty 2 preset was used to bring in more detail with a layer mask and brush used to remove the effect from highlights.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 layer mask was used to apply this effect only to the foreground area.

An adjustment layer was used to convert to mono.

Brightness contrast adjustment layer used to increase both brightness and contrast.

The healing and clone tools were used to tidy up.

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

City Hall So Next Century OriginalCity Hall So Next Century Final

Tonemapped image

City Hall So Next Century TonemappedCity Hall So Next Century

Final Image

City Hall So Next Century FinalCity Hall So Next Century

For licences and prints see City Hall So Next Century

Edwin Jones