One shot deal

RobNZ · Oct 4, 2010

We headed up to Auckland for my brother in-laws wedding over the weekend, over the rehearsal dinner I asked my brother in-laws soon to be brother in-law (confused yet?) where I could go to get a particular shot that I had in mind.

I wanted the Auckland Harbour bridge and the Auckland Sky City Casino Tower (tallest man made structure in the southern hemisphere, not sure if it still is though, just a touch over 1000ft). He gave me the name of a street I could head to get the shot I was after, he did say though that I may not find any foreground interest (he is an artist in his own right, and he was bang on the money).

So we flicked the kids off to the grandparents after dinner and my wife, her sister and my other brother inlaw piled into the car and headed off.

I think I spent about 15 minutes assessing the scene and my options and then worked out in my head how it was going to have to play out.

The result I wanted was simple, clean, instantly recogniseable by anyone from NZ, large format panoramic print.

I think I got it.

The sky tower is lit that colour as part of a breast cancer awareness drive here at present.

I usually scout a location by day to find the best vantage point, and I was gutted when we drove down the road to find a much better angle, but it was 11pm and my passengers were ready for bed.

Thoughts?

crimbfighter · Oct 4, 2010

Great shot! I really like it, along with most of your other work. The only thing I can think of, and of course this may just be my personal taste, but the composition seems a little unbalanced to me. The main span of the bridge adds a lot of height to the subject matter, this case being the skyline, but the right side of the frame sorta diminishes down to almost nothing. What seems to me would help, would be to trim off about half the distance between the tower and the right side of the frame, and trim off about two thirds of the water. To me, that would bring a better balance to the frame. But, then again, capturing all of that skyline in the shot may be what makes it so recognizable to other NZ'landers, and therefore it was intentional. Those are my thoughts, which are often worth little more than $0.01, so take it for what it's worth... Cheers!

P.S. Was this a pano stitched together from several shots, or was it a panoramic crop of a single image?

RobNZ · Oct 4, 2010

crimbfighter said:
P.S. Was this a pano stitched together from several shots, or was it a panoramic crop of a single image?

Thanks for your feedback crimbfighter, some good ideas on recropping.

This is a 3 shot stitch, 3 exposures for each shot giving a total of 9.

crimbfighter · Oct 4, 2010

RobNZ said:
This is a 3 shot stitch, 3 exposures for each shot giving a total of 9.

Could you give a quick explanation on the process you used. I'm most interested in how you combined the multiple exposures into the three main shots used for the final result. Did you create three separate HDR images then stitch those? Or did you use some other process or technique?

RobNZ · Oct 4, 2010

crimbfighter said:
RobNZ said:

This is a 3 shot stitch, 3 exposures for each shot giving a total of 9.

Click to expand...

Did you create three separate HDR images then stitch those?

Yep, spot on.

For processing I take the first 3 exposures of the same scene and Merge to HDR Pro, adjust to my liking and save the preset and then open in cs5.

I do the same for the next 2 sets.

Once all 3 are open in cs5 I copy the left and right of each HDR image onto the middle one and manually align using reduced opacity (so I can see the alignment, correct any tilt offset etc), I add a layer mask to each the left and right and blend together manually.

You can do the alignment automatically, but I am into doing things manually at present to force my continued learning.

The 3D version I have of part of this scene is the same process, but twice as much work for the above, and then I expect another couple hours of post fine tuning etc. And I have just discovered one of the buildings in the shot had the lights for an entire floor turned off in between the time it took me to position for the 2nd angle, lol, now that is going to take some work post to fix, will have to make a decision if its worth my time to correct.

sam_justice · Oct 4, 2010

I'm not questioning your methods, but why did you feel the need to exposure bracket for this? Seems as though you could've got the final result without having to resort to HDR

Morpheuss · Oct 4, 2010

I think its absolutely beautiful a very nice photo. Looks like something you would see on a post card very beautiful

RobNZ · Oct 4, 2010

sam_justice said:
I'm not questioning your methods, but why did you feel the need to exposure bracket for this? Seems as though you could've got the final result without having to resort to HDR

Pretty simple really sam, detail (you cant see it at this size, but at full res its quite remarkable) and because I am still experimenting/perfecting my own techniques.