Take the Stairs

Take the Stairs, a photo by Tony DeSantis Photography on Flickr.

Sunlight would have given this photo a lot more contrast and colors but sometimes you get what you get. This is a shot of the LA Library from across the street and up the stairs. the building on the left is the US Bank and just to the right out of the shot is Citibank.

The little yellow cone at the escalator to the right gave me the idea for the title.

My post processing on this photo took a little turn of difference.  My first processing try didn't really come out that great with the -2, 0, +2.  I guess it just didn't capture enough detail.  So I made a +1,-1 and -3 from those raw files.  That seemed to give me the easier and nicer process for the contrasts I was looking for.  Once again I was hoping for more sunlight early in the morning for more contrasts but the foggy morning never let up.  I head out to LA on Sunday mornings just because the streets are empty.  I can get out to LA by 5:30-6:00 drive around, park anywhere, shoot and get home shower and make it to church for the 11:00am service.  How cool is that!?

The Shot:
>Standard 3 Shot HDR +2, 0, -2,  ISO 400, F/11, 24-105L @24mm, Tripod and Cable shutter release.

Post Processing:

>ACR

>reprocessed 3 more tiffs +1, -1, -3

>Removed All Sharpening, Added Noise Reduction, Removed Chromatic Abberration

>Saved as Tiffs

Photomatix:

>Detail Enhancer

>Strength 100%

>Color Saturation 92%

>Smoothing (Very High)

>Luminosity 0.0

>White Point 4.856

>Black Point 1.055

>Microsmoothing 6.0 

>Saved as 16 Bit Tiff

Post Processing CS-5

>Topaz Adjust-Color and Detail Enhancement

>Topaz InFocus-Sharpening

>Color efex Pro 3.0

   >Pro Contrast

   >Tonal Contrast (Masked for buildings only)

   >Glamor Glow (Masked for certain areas and opacity lowered to taste)

   >Bleach Bypass (Masked and used in areas where needed, Opacity lowered)

>Adjustment Layer-Hue/Sat-Bring out peach color in small building on left and cement stair railings

>Adjustment Layer-Hue/Sat-Bring out orange's in lights to left and in bushes

>Corrected lens distortion

>Framed and sized for posting