Sony Center am Potsdamer Platz - Berlin, Germany (Vertorama, HDR)
The story of this photo:
The Sony Center is at the heart of the newly shaped Potsdamer Platz area. It is a symbol for the new Berlin with its modern buildings and culture. When you visit Berlin, this will surely be on your list of sights apart from all the historic places. This place has a remarkable architecture and atmosphere and a lot of ways to spend your spare time.
History
"The site was originally a bustling city centre in the early 20th century. Most of the buildings were destroyed or damaged during World War II. From 1961 on, most of the area became part of the No Man's Land of the Berlin Wall, resulting in the destruction of the remaining buildings. After the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, the square became the focus of attention again, as a large (some 60 hectares), attractive location which had suddenly become available in the centre of a major European capital city. As part of a redevelopment effort for the area, the center was constructed. The centre was designed by Helmut Jahn and construction was completed in 2000 at a total cost of €750M." [Wikipedia]
Take a look at my "HDR Cookbook"! It contains some more information on my techniques.
Success story:
This photo must have been in Explore on June 19th 2010 for about a nanosecond. At least, I know no other explanation for a referer like "/explore/interesting/7days/". Anyway, apparently it was in for such a short time that Scout did not even pick it up. This would have been my first photo featured in Explore. ... [sigh] ... I decided not to bother. Who needs explore anyway!?!?!? ... [biting the carpet, rolling around like mad] :-)
How it was shot:
> Handheld [Details]
> 12 exposures (4 x 0, -2, +2 ev) autobracketed
> Camera: Nikon D90
> Lens: Sigma 10-20mm F3,5 EX DC HSM
> Details can be found Here
How it was stitched and tonemapped:
> Created 4 32bit HDRs (3 exposures each, 0, -2, +2 ev) in Photomatix' batch mode
> Stitched the 32bit HDRs with Photomerge (Photoshop) and saved in OpenEXR format
> Tonemapped the resulting vertorama HDR with Photomatix version 3.1 (Detail Enhancer)
> Take a look here for a more detailed description.
How it was post-processed:
> Post-processing was done in Photoshop
> Topaz Adjust on the entire image to get back the colors and the details
> Topaz Denoise [Details]
> Saturation and curves layers on the glass of the buildings to increase the contrast and the cyan and yellow tones (decreases reds a bit)
> Saturation layer on the roof (increased yellows)
> Levels layer masked with an inverted copy of the blue channel to even out uneven luminance in the sky resulting from the tonemapping
> Saturation and levels layer on the sky to tune the brightness and the blue tones
> Sharpening using the high-pass filter [Details]
Related photos that you may like:
If you like this photo, you may also want to view the following photos...
> A Subtle Hint (HDR)
> New Meets Old (HDR)
...and take a look at the following set(s):
HDR
Any comments, feedback or criticisms are highly welcome! Thanks for viewing!
