Seoul from the Sky
View of Seoul from one of the tallest buildings in the city. I love photographing from these spots and more they are closer to the city with other tall buildings nearby, more they offer a beautiful view.
In my trip to Korea I photographed very much from spots like this, you will see it on the next posts… In the meantime I wanted to tell you about how I made this photo:
I climbed to the top of Seoul Tower after a pretty rainy day, I feared all the time to the last that the windows could be dirty and stained by the rain but incredibly (don’t ask me how) it wasn’t
To shoot the cityscape I always prefer a little glow of daylight before the total darkness falls, so I always prefer to start shooting from the blue hour.
Also mindful of last year’s experience where I took all my photos through glass covering the camera with a sweatshirt 🙂 this year I had a useful accessory that you find on the web for a few euros … it’s a sucker that is made pass through your lens and you can stick it to the glass with the lens, so as to completely avoid any reflection coming from behind you
In the picture there is a glare of sunlight that I captured through a series of long exposures and bracketing. The sky has a different exposure than the rest of the photo, this to prevent the lights of the city from being too strong-
For the city I take 3 bracketed shots that I used to correct the citylights and exposure of the builings and streets
WORKFLOW EXPLANATION
I blended the exposure for the city, using the dark exposure to decrease highlights on the streets and buildings. As I said before I also captured a series of long exposure for the sky that I blended with the first take of the one of the city of Seoul
I launched details enhancements using TTS Pro, I also added details to the shadows using the effect inside the panel. I made a series of colour correction to increase the blue color, decrease the red spot on the right, increase yellows coming from the city
With the use of luminosity masks I increased highlights and lights coming from the sky, giving more energy and light at the whole frame
I correct the horizon line and applied a free trasform to correct the wide angle distorsion on some building, than with the clone stamp tool I removed some spot of rain on the glass
The last passage was to add a soft vignette to emphatize the central part of the picture
I really hope you will find this usefull. I love to ear this from you!
TECNHNICAL STUFF
Camera: Nikon D-800
Sigma 24-70 f/2,8 (used at 32mm)
Three Exposures (-1; 0; +1) + Long exposure for the sky
ISO: 100 at f/14
Software: Photoshop CC2019
Plugin: TTS Pro
