Before and After No 3

The 3rd article in my Before and After series where I will describe how images were created and post processed.

This image is an HDR image taken of a country church located in Caledon Ontario.

About the Photograph:

The day was a hot, hazy summer afternoon. The sky was very uninteresting so I elected to take the photo using multiple exposures. This was the first time trying my Panasonic GX1 in auto bracket mode. The fact the GX1 had auto bracketing in full stops is the main reason for changing form the GF1.  I took a 7 exposure bracket in (+3,+2,+1, 0,-1,-2,-3 ) shot in order to ensure shadow and highlight details could be captured. Since the GX1 is a Micro 4/3 format camera, its much lighter then my dSLRs so I tried to take the shot hand held. 

0 EV.

-1 EV.

-2 EV.

 -3 EV.

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+3 EV.

HDR Master Image.

 Lightroom 4 Basic Adjustments.

The 7 images were then imported in to Photomatix in order to create the tonemapped image. I adjusted the image in order to create a balanced master image. I purposely kept saturation levels at a natural state as I was going to later do additional post processing to enhance the final image. Once the HDR Master image was created, it was then fine-tuned in Lightroom to provide colour adjustments to the sky, saturation and colour adjustments to the grounds and then compositional cropping. Final adjustments in Photoshop (including extensive edits to hide the portable toilet behind the church sign), the master image was imported into  Topaz Adjust and Topaz Detail to improve contrast and details. Finally a vignette was added back in Lightroom to complete the project.​

The Final Image: