I've been trying to express a more creative side to my photography and to that end I've spent an hour on two different days during the past week or so exploring the inside of the Queen Victoria Building to find some interesting scenes and angles to shoot and to create some more arty and interesting looks.
I'd also been learning some new High Dynamic Range processing techniques. These tended more towards the surreal fantasy look (unlike my usual HDR's which aim to be more photographic) and as such these are not necessarily meant to portray a realistic view of the scene but rather to give a more ethereal glow to the vision - one which I think works with the very colourful, vibrant and textural interior of this old world building.
All the HDR images were created by merging multiple (3) different exposures of the same scene to create the final image and look.
The individual frames are taken at 0, -2 and +2EV and as they were all shot indoors in low light I had to both increase my sensor sensitivity (ISO) as well as use a very low shutter speed (especially for the overexposed +2EV frames). In these conditions getting a nice sharp shot is made much more difficult and shooting them handheld even more so. I took my new Benro carbon fibre monopod with me to stabilise the shots which I used for pretty much every image and this has worked exceedingly well to get the sets of three sharp images to use.
The first image was actually taken at the end of my previous trip to the building and it was the post processing of this image which inspired me to go back and take some more images expressly so I could process some more in a similar vein.
"A Grand Slice of Time"
D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 8mm, 1/25 sec at f/8, ISO 1600
A sweeping view of the large main dome on the top floor taken from near floor level.
"Imperial Dome"
D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 8mm, 1/20 sec at f/8, ISO 500
A view down the main entrance escalators off George Street with the backlit stained glass windows.
"Up or Down"
D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 8mm, 1/10 sec at f/8, ISO 1000
These highly reflective mirrored glass escalators inside are a new addition to the building and make for some interesting reflections.
"Reflections"
D90 + Sigma 8-16mm @ 8mm, 1/25 sec at f/8, ISO 800
If you find out, please let me know.
