Papi's Red Hots

[The Barbarian]

 

[W.Y.Photo]

Next time Id consider taking a seperate exposure for those two lights and compositing it in after. something that gives them a star like effect without the giant white splotch in the middle. Currently they are so distracting I can barely look at the building.

 

[The Barbarian]

It's an HDR. Five exposures. I don't think you'd have much luck making it any less, and even if you did, it wouldn't look the way it does to the eye. Not that you couldn't paint in something to make the lights less, but of course, it wouldn't be what it actually looked like.

 

[W.Y.Photo]

I'm not sure you get what I mean, I'm aware its an HDR but what I'm suggesting (for next time you do a shoot like this) is taking an additional, much darker exposure in order to make the spots of light as small as its source would appear normally in the image while retaining the star pattern they create, then using that image for the sky portion of the HDR. This would make the lights far less distracting but still visually pleasing, and in my opinion would make it look even closer to what the eye would normally see.

If you do know what I mean I apologize for misinterpreting, just a suggestion.

Other than that, I really enjoy this image, HDR is an excellent tool for photographing buildings covered in neon lights and I think you did a fairly good job of using it to your advantage. I've always wanted to see a photographer create a large series of images of restaurants covered in lights like this.

 

[The Barbarian]

No problem, just pointing out why I made the image as I did. I usually try to recreate what I saw, and that can be any number of things. However, I do have some additional images that I didn't use in the original HDR...