A touch from the heavens

A touch from the heavens

The past two weeks have been a wonderful time for me to add to my current lifestyle. I’ve been working on the business side of things for a few months now, so I decided it was time to put extra emphasis onto my personal development.

Waking up at the crack of dawn, I’ve enjoyed meditating early, reading books I’ve been meaning to read for a while, and running… all before the world has woken up. There’s nothing more invigorating than beginning your day with a motivational kick!

These past few days Rachel and I have been in Busan for a relaxing beach getaway. Each morning, while the air was still fresh, I ran along the beach, past the fisherman and old fish-wives setting up shop for the day, to the ultra-modern building complex from today’s shot. No matter how tired I felt when I wake up, I always feel on top of the world after a good run.

Today’s Photo – Skyscrapers

To learn my post-processing techniques, feel free to check out my courses: The Art of Digital Blending & The Art of Cityscape Photography

This was created from a single exposure. The scene was fairly flat so I had a lot of work to do. I knew that if I waited 30 minutes, which is when I prefer to shoot night cityscapes (almost the end of blue hour), the sky would be darker and the building lights brighter, giving me more drama and contrast. However, the cloud cover was thickening very quickly so I decided to shoot at early blue hour to capture some individual clouds. 30 minutes later there was a thick blanket of smooth cloud cover that really didn’t offer me what I was hoping for.

My vision of this image was capturing those wonderfully overpowering buildings, towering up into the sky, surrounded by dramatic clouds. I hoped to create an image where the sharp edges, and fine details of the buildings would contrast nicely against the smooth clouds.

Since the clouds weren’t as dramatic as I’d hoped for, I decided that I’d have to break this image into 2 parts; the sky & buildings, each of which would get different treatment.

Using the Quick Selection tool I made an accurate selection of the sky and then saved this selection so that I could return to it later. To compensate for the lack of drama in the clouds, I decided to add a motion blur layer to the clouds to give them a sense of movement, which I hoped would add to the contrasting elements within the scene.

I used Nik’s Viveza (the structure slider) to increase local contrast across the sky. I was very generous with this slider so that I could really bring out more drama in the clouds.

I then darkened the sky (and increased contrast) dramatically with a Curves layer. For the buildings I applied a gentler Viveza layer to bring out the details slightly.

Having shot at early blue hour (as you can see by the ‘before’ image), the sky was a strong blue. In fact, it was too blue. It wasn’t complimenting the cold, futuristic mood I was aiming for. I desaturated it significantly, and to compliment this deeper blue I changed the colour of the building lights to yellow.

To add more emphasis onto the central clouds, I used the elliptical marquee tool, with a feather of 300, and created an oval selection in that area. I then opened a Levels layer and increased the highlights and midtones slightly. To finish, I added a strong Darken/Lighten Center filter from Nik Color Efex, to shift the balance of light and create a smooth vignette.

A big thank you to Nathaniel Merz for the compositional inspiration!