Extreme Clouds Over Parliament Hill (Ottawa)

This is was an unplanned shot – a lucky accident. We were visiting friends in Ottawa on Christmas eve, and the entire day the weather was very gloomy with grey, dull skies, something that’s fairly normal for the beginning of winter in Eastern Canada. And unfortunately, that also means minimum opportunity for landscape or travel photography.

Before going to our friend’s place, I decided to give my wife and daughter a tour of the National Gallery of Canada, a place I like mostly because of its architecture. After the short tour, we walked out of the gallery and turned around the corner to visit Nepean Point. This is the scene we saw. It lasted only a few minutes, but it was enough for me to take a few interesting shots.

The moral here is to be ready for unexpected. In my case, I was not ready but I got lucky anyway :-).

Deconstructing Featured Photo

Camera: Canon 60D
Lens: Sigma 17-70mm
Focal Length: 17mm
Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority (A)
ISO: 400
Aperture: F2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/100
Bracketing: 3 shots (-1; 0; +1)
Tripod: hand-held

Processing: HDR Processed

Lightroom: import, tagging, export to Photoshop HDR Pro
Photoshop: 3 exposures ( -1, 0, +1) used to tone map image, 32-bit tiff image was saved to Lightroom (check my free guide “Natural Looking HDR Workflow“)
Lightroom: straightening, cropping, color correction, export as PSD image
Photoshop: cleaning, sharpening
Photoshop Plugins:

• Topaz DeNoise was used to enhance details in the middle of the frame (buildings, trees) – check my Topaz DeNoise Product Review.
• Topaz Detail helped to eliminate noise in the sky and water

Archiving: I save all my photos as JPEG (quality: 100%) at full resolution and with the help of the Lightroom plugin, I synchronized them with my portfolio on SmugMug for safekeeping, sharing, image hosting and online sales.

Do not forget that my FREE Lightroom Preset Collection is always free for all subscribers to my newsletter.