Pic of the Day #431

Kenneth Hynek • 24th Nov 2007 • Photography, Pic of the Day

The London Eye is an impressive sight to behold, and had I had another day or three to spend in London I would have made a point of taking a spin on it. As it is, though, I was content to settle for getting this shot of it, with the Parliament Buildings and the clock tower that is home to Big Ben visible (and reasonably well-resolved) in the background.

This shot actually took a fair bit of editing to get to the point that it is at. I began by applying my usual calibration/Punch combination preset, and some sharpening as well, and then switched gears and turned to highlight recovery (the sky was barely blue, and was mostly washed out). After that, I applied a bit of fill light and increased the dark cutoff slightly (to restore lost contrast). Finally, I increased the saturation (and decreased the luminance) in the blue channel to a large extent, and in the orange, green, and yellow channels to a lesser extent.

The resultant picture is, I think, quite nice as a result. Everything in the shot is well-exposed (now…), the sky in particular retains a goodly degree of detail, and the London Eye provides some framing for the shot from the left side.