This is another one of those "on the way to work in the wee hours" shots of mine. I can't seem to find time to get shots another way, lately. Last time I tried this, I got my gear all setup and ready to shoot and wham, all of the lights went out. It was just a week or two before daylight savings time kicked in. So, now that it's darker in the morning longer, I gave it another shot.

This shot presented some challenges when I merged and tonemapped it. I originally merged 5 raws ranging from -2 to +2 at 1 stop EVs, but that didn't turn out too nicely. Lots of noise in the sky and such. So I just did 3 brackets from -1 to +1 and merged those instead. I then did my usual Nik stuff using pro contrast, tonal contrast and bleach bypass. Oh, and I really had to mask out the sky with one of the original raws because it still presented quite a bit of noise. Anyway, after that, I mixed in one of the originals with the HDR and mixed them using the color preset in CS4. It kind of brought out some more of the tones in the star and the building. It was kind of subtle, but it added a little pop to it.

The website for the museum is here.