HDR in the Old City, Jerusalem
Posted by Avital Pinnick on March 21, 2010
What can you do with a site that’s been photographed a million times? Well, if you happen to show up during a tsunami, that’s one option. Or the building of the Third Temple — that’s another but rather hard to mark in your calendar. I decided to try a little HDR.
This view of the Old City was taken on a slightly cloudy day (love those clouds for HDR!) from the roof of the Aish haTorah yeshiva building. I used three exposures.
This photo of the Kotel (Western Wall) was generated from a single RAW file because it was the only way I could deal with all the movement, in this case, all the people walking through the plaza. Sure, it looks quite unnatural. I chose the surreal look because the Kotel has been done so often.
The Dale Chihuly glass installation in the atrium of Aish haTorah was done with three separate exposures. I post-processed it to look a bit more natural, so you can actually see the colours, shading, and texture of the glass that would otherwise have been obscured by the shadows.
For the sake of comparison, here’s an unprocessed photo of the installation.
All three photos were processed with Photomatix 3.0. Camera was hand-held.
Angie in Mexico said
Love the Kotel photo! It looks like a 60′s photo…
pam said
Wow! HDR is the way to go when photographing Chihuly! There is just no comparison between these images of the installation.
Even though the Kotel photos appear a little otherworldly, I rather like the effect – especially with that sky show! The images have an ethereal feeling to them. Works for me.