Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Sneaking A Shot Inside "The Egg"

So, I paid the money to get inside "The Egg" in Beijing. It was almost closing time, but I just wanted to get in, take some photos, and get out. It actually turned out to be the perfect time to go, as there were hardly any people inside. When I got to the top, they had the area roped off...so, I couldn't get a photo of the big "red thing" that was hanging from the ceiling. I asked the security guard if I could just go up for a quick photo, but he waved to me saying "NO"....so, I walked to the other side where there was no guard standing by, and climbed under the ropes, and snuck upstairs...I felt like a bad little kid going where he wasn't supposed to go...grabbed a photo, and snuck my way back. When I climbed under the ropes, some western tourists saw me...they gave me a nasty look, but I just pretended I knew what I was doing, and walked past them to the exit...what a bad boy I am...

I did have my tripod with me, and no-one gave me any hassle using it inside. This is a 5-shot HDR...tonemapped in Photomatix, and then I finished it off in Photoshop...What did I do in Photoshop? Well, I did some sharpening, and I also created a mask with my darkest exposure to bring back the detail in the window above....it was blown out after creating the HDR. I then added a "glow" using Nik's Color Efex Pro (Glamour Glow), but changed the opacity to the filter so that it was not too "glowy" if you know what I mean...

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