Here we have the Palace theater in Georgetown. I think every small town in Texas has a similar theater. They all seem to be named "The Palace", too for some reason. I took this one on my self-imposed photowalk of the square last night. I've been wanting to get a shot of this place for a while, but it seemed the light was never right. You see, the sun sets behind the building, therefore a night shot is great. But, every time I've tried to shoot it, it has been in the morning and the sky behind it would be pitch black. That didn't help. But, I think this one worked out well. If you would like to read more about the theater,
click here and read its history.This one was taken with my Nikon D90 and my Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens. I bracketed 5 jpgs from -2 to +2 EVs at 1 stop increments. I then merged them in Photoshop CS4 (using Bridge) and then tonemapped it in Photomatix. Lastly, I post-processed them in CS4 with the Nik Color Efex plugin. I used the pro contrast filter at about 35% opacity, the tonal contrast filter at about 65% opacity and the bleach bypass filter at approx. 15-20% opacity. I cleaned up the noise with Imagenomic's Noiseware using the weaker noise setting and then sharpened it with Nik Sharpener at about 60% opacity. Last thing I did was adjust the exposure to +0.08, the offset to -0.0020, and the gamma 0.96. That's just about my standard work-flow. I will vary from picture to picture, but that's pretty much my normal routine.However, the most notable thing in this one is that the pro contrast filter in Nik had to be reduce to 35% opacity whereas I normally use about 65%. Not a big deal, but like I said, it can vary from shot to shot.