After a day of clouds and rain, the sun started to break through on a chilly, March afternoon in Washington, North Carolina. This HDR photo shows the before (clouds in the background) and after (beautiful sunlit buildings). Washington is one of my favorite places for casual shooting. With the older architecture, beautiful river walkway/boardwalk and (always) stunning cloud formations, there’s never a dull photographic moment.

Processing: Five images from -2 to +2 ev shot at 1 ev intervals loaded into Nik HDR Efex Pro. I used the blended file with only minor changes for selective structuring and overall sharpening. I used a few small Control Points to lighten up the interior areas and get a more realistic view.  In Adobe Photoshop, I used Curves for more contrast to bring out the sun on the buildings and Hue/Saturation to take out the blue in the clouds. HDR Efex Pro seems to add too much blue most of the time.

And, continuing with my new love of Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, here’s a monochrome version.

Equipment used: Nikon D700 with 50mm f/1.8 lens at f/11, ISO 800.