i really wanna know how to do this!

[Alpha]

I've used it a bazillion times before. I know exactly what it looks like. It's a specialized technique, in the same way that split-filter printing in the darkroom is. It's not often part of your average workflow, though it does have its place for certain applications.

As often is the case, I'm in part reacting to what I think is the over-prescription of post-processing techniques. I'm not being a purist here, but rather saying that a lot of things can be accomplished rather simply (not that high pass is difficult). I simply don't see the need for its use here. Your standard sharpening, dodging and burning, and perhaps mild curve/level/contrast adjustment would be all that's needed to post-process a shot and get it to turn out like that. I also think that if you want to talk about high-pass filtering, you ought to be more specific about how, particularly since it's so oft-used in the now very played out imitations of the Dragan effect.

 

[D-50]

Bazillion is not even a number nor a word.... I'm done here.

 

[Bobby Ironsights]

What's HDR?

On the picture though, my first thought was that someone used a proper large format camera, with a wide lens.

The corners are out of focus and I thought that might be someone using old glass (common with large format) and the street is empty so I thought someone might have used f32, so any people or traffic passing by, just don't show up on the several minute exposures.

This wouldn't be a particularly stunning large format shot, but it does have a bit of that "sharp as a handful of razor blades" large format'ish thing going for it.

Nope, after looking at it again, I see that it's just high contrast, not large format sharpness at all.