Love the detail preservation in HDR...

"Chapel of St John the Evangelist", Tower of London 4/9/07

For your enjoyment another installment on the European vacation shot RAW with HDR in mind this last spring. It is the Chapel of St John the Evangelist within the main tower at the center of the complex named the White Tower that dates back to the first millennium. The Chapel is on the first floor and is considered to be one of the most perfect examples of Norman architecture in all of London.

At the time I saw the chapel I knew it would benefit from HDR's ability to preserve details across a wide spectrum of light intensity. For this image I opted to use only 2 exposures choosing to allow some rich blacks void of most detail to add to the romantic view of the chapel. After the HDR file was generated with Photomatix the same programs tone mapping option was used to condense the final file into one a printer and monitor can reproduce. I opted to go very natural as well rather than the surreal. After that I cleaned up the color balance with CS2 and did the final adjustments with Virtual Photographer.

Why do I bring this up now you may ask? Well Paint n Play gallery here in Monrovia has a customer who wanted a companion piece to the "Abandoned Church Paris" that I blogged about here before. Actually they've been quite popular and I will have additional pieces for sale and display at the coming Art Walk on July 28th from 6-9PM on Myrtle Avenue in Old Town Monrovia.