07.02.2024
This highlight shows the Vienna Skyline in the direction of Donau City, which is the area close to the UNO buildings. Of course, Vienna is known for its beautiful inner city, but its modern sky line is worth showing as well. On the far right, you can also see the well known Danube Tower.
On the day I took this photo, I actually planned to be there earlier with the aim to take several photos from the golden hour, via the sunset, to the blue hour. Regretfully (or fortunately ...) I was caught in some meetings that day, which mean I arrived just after blue hour. Nevertheless, I took several photos of the skyline using different exposures, which I combined, resulting in this highlight. As there was hardly any wind that evening. the skyline is beautifully mirrored in the water. And, rest assured, as this location is close to my regular commute from my pied-à-terre in Vienna to my office at TU Wien, I certainly do plan to come back here and "collect" more images.
In post, I actually combined five exposures. To each of them I applied Lightroom's build in (AI powered) noise reduction, and then aligned, and blended everything in PhotoShop. One exposure I used as a base for the buildings and the sky. For that exposure I also pushed the contrast in the sky. Due to the low hanging clouds, the city lights slightly lid up the clouds. One other exposure I rendered in black and white, to use to create a bit more structure to some of the buildings. Due to the long exposure of the base image, some of the lights in the buildings had started to "bleed". This also happened to the "sail" on top of the left high rise. So, for that one I also used another (shorter exposed) image, to bring back more structure to the top of that building. In the base image, the red lights were also a bit too intense. The middle parts of these lights were showing as almost white/yellow lights. There I used another exposure as well to "repair" the lights. And finally, as the left tower is still under construction, there is a construction light mounted on top. This one caused quite a flare on top of that building. I had the same issue with the red light on top of the building on the middle. To repair these, I made a copy of the sky. In this copy, I first cloned out these intensive flares, resulting in a flare-free sky. I then blended this over the flares to reduce their effect, without loosing some of it.
