Great submissions so far!


I think what I'd most want changed about the original image would have been to try the shot on a brightly moonlit night. Here's my attempt to post-process it to something that shot might have looked like:


[img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Components-UserFiles/00-00-00-35-15/Assignment22.jpg[/img]


I first opened the RAW file in DxO (patham, for me it went straight to the 40D + Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM). There, I straightened and cropped slightly, recovered highlights then dropped the exposure by 2.67 stops, set the color temperature to 3000K with +40 tint, and applied a bit of HDR (along with DxO's automatic corrections for vignetting, distortion, sharpness, CA and noise). I exported as a TIFF and opened it in Photoshop. There, I selectively adjusted the hue-saturation-lightness (HSL) of the sky, cleaned up a few hotspot reflections, and removed the contrails and the bird. Finally, I selectively adjusted the HSL of the lights to 'turn them on' for the simulated night shot, reduced the image size and sharpened slightly.