John Street Roundhouse - Part 3

Part 1 | Part 2

My final HDR image of John Street Roundhouse series includes a shot of locomotive Canadian Pacific 7069. Built in 1948 this particular model is officially known as Baldwin DS4-4-1000. It was privately owned and worked in Vancouver area for most of its life before ending up at John Street Roundhouse. Since 7069 doesn't have much history in Ontario the museum is looking to trade it to a good home.

As usual, I took bracketed (-2 to +2) exposures then merged them in Photomatix for tonemapping and finally cleaned up in Photoshop to create the final image. But first a look at original shot will reveal a general lacking of features in the image. Sky is almost blown out and highlights are too dark.



Original image at normal exposure

After tonemapping in Photomatix sky became excessively "dirty", I tried remixing with -2 exposure to give it more natural look. But the resulting image didn't look normal at all. So I opened tonemapped and -2 exposure images on their own layers and changed layer option to "overlay". This removed some of the "dirty" sky and produced color temperature that seemed to blend well with rest of the image. The sky still remained darker, but I wanted a "gloomy" look in the final image. Finally I applied some cropping and Nik's "Pro Contrast" filter to make the picture pop. Here is the final product.



Final image. Click to view large version.

I would like to share some insights I learned while working on these images:

• Always use a tripod if you can help it - even though Photomatix tries to align source images, resulting image is still somewhat misaligned. I spend a great deal of time cleaning up third image of this series to remove "ghosting".
• HDR seems to work really well bringing out texture in rust and wood, so definitely take bracketed shots for subject of this nature
• Try to clean up "dirty" sky as much as possible - best option is to remix with -2 exposure and go from there
• Take shots at lower ISO value - since tonemapping almost always introduces noise, exposures at lower ISO will help minimize. If there is still visible noise try to clean up.
• Take plenty of shots from different angles, you never know which one will look best

Toronto Railway Heritage Centre is a must visit attraction located in the heart of downtown Toronto. I am looking forward to going back when they open  for public viewing. You can even volunteer if you're into that sort of things! Do you have some tips to share for creating HDR images? What works for you? What doesn't? I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of these images or your own.