I’ve been shooting a lot of images around London recently. I thought this was an interesting image to discuss.
Here’s the original image as it came right out the camera:

It’s not a horrible, but it has a number of problems. Not least, the contrast range that is too great for even the exceptional Nikon D3 camera, and the vertical lines that are just not vertical.
So, I also took some other images that were exposed differently (Using a tripod, and adjusting the shutter speed). Here’s what they looked like:


The first is obviously over-exposed, while the second is far too dark, but each one has elements that proved to be useful.

So I took the following elements of each of the these images.

This is what was kept from the darkest, most under exposed image. Note how the clock face from Big Ben has been carefully cut out and kept, to hold the detail in an area of the picture that is very well illuminated and is often over-exposed in images of this subject.

Then this selection (see above) was added underneath the darker layer. In effect, this means that the sky is not going to be used from this layer, but the main element being added is the water of the river in the foreground.
Finally the following layer was added at the bottom of the stack of layers.

The three elements look a bit of a mess when seen in isolation, but when combined, the effect is quite successful. Combined with some vertical correction and some localized retouching to remove litter and vapor trails in the sky, as well as a bit of creative retouching to increase the space available at the top and the bottom of the frame, and remove a few minor elements of the image that I thought were a bit distracting, the finished image looked like this:

The final image has been uploaded to the Getty Images website and is available for commercial and editorial use.
To see the image on the Getty Images website, click here.

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