After the long drive from the west coast of Canada to Scotland (which incidentally took longer than going to China!), I gave myself a day to rest up, get over the jet lag, and make sure my brain was in gear.
I really needed to be able to think straight before embarking on the mighty challenge of driving on the left to the Isle of Skye.
On my rest day, I like to get out for a walk in the afternoon to get some fresh air and sunlight which helps me make the transition to the new time zone. One of the best things I have found to do on such a day is to get on one of those “hop on-hop off” tourists buses that take you around the city. It’s a great way to see some things without expending too much energy.
In Glasgow, I was enjoying the ride and seeing the sights when the next stop announced was the University of Glasgow and the Hunterian Art Gallery. I looked up and saw some beautiful old architecture and figured that would be a great place to stretch the legs.
Wow, was I rewarded!!
I never even made it inside the art gallery because I spent all my time photographing these amazing arches in the entryway.
There was hardly anyone there, so it wasn’t too bad as far as waiting for people to get out of the way for my shots.
It was really dark under the arches, and quite bright outside, so for each image I made three exposures and then blended them together to make a high-dynamic range (HDR) image.
Now that I found Aurora HDR, I’m much more open to making HDR shots again! But photographing architecture with a wide angle lens has it’s challenges too since the images were quite distorted.
Post-Processing Walk Through
If you’re interested in how I processed these photos, I made a video demonstration showing how I processed the photo above using Lightroom, Aurora HDR and then Luminar.
Aurora HDR was just named best Mac App of 2017, so I guess I’m not the only one who’s been raving about it lately. I really like the natural looking results I’m able to achieve. If you’re interested in seeing more, I did a full review and video demonstration of Aurora here.
There’s also a full review and video demonstration of Luminar if you’re interested in checking that one out.
After watching your video reviews of Aurora and Luminar, I am impressed with the improvements you can make to images. I was wondering if you can recommend one over the other for those of us that are just beginners in landscape photography.
Hi Phyllis, I would recommend Luminar if you are just beginning. Aurora is only for making HDR images, whereas you can use Luminar for everything. I’m sure you’ll love it! Thanks for the question.
I love these photographs Anne. the subject matter, for some reason, really appeals to me. Thank you so much for sharing.
Brian
Thank you so much Brian! I haven’t done much architecture photography for a long time, so it’s fun to do something new.
I’m sorry Anne but I do not like the obvious HDR processed look in your pictures of the Hunterian Art Gallery arches. I bought Luminar following your review but I won’t be buying Aurora HDR! .I trust that you were able to get some other good pictures whilst on Skye in spite of the storm named Brian.
Hi Donald, That’s okay! HDR is not for everyone, I know. I do appreciate your feedback 🙂 Yes, I got some really nice photos on Skye, I loved it there. I did have to wait out about 3 days while the hurricane went through, but the skies after the hurricane were really dramatic so it was all worth it. Thanks for your comments. Happy New Year!
Love the photographs. Love the composition. Simply gorgeous depictions of the architecture, makes me want to go to Scotland
Thank you so much Gary, much appreciated! I loved Scotland and would highly recommend it. I would like to spend more time in the cities to photograph the architecture, even though I don’t like cities very much. But the countryside was absolutely stunning!
Beautiful photo! And I enjoyed watching the video. I use Lightroom heavily, and have never been happy with its HDR processing on my bracketed images, so I might try Aurora. As for Luminar — can’t you do everything that you did in Luminar also in Lightroom? I don’t see what Luminar provides that is not already in Lightroom, apart from the presets (which you can make yourself). Am I missing something?
Hi Alice, I agree, I wasn’t at all impressed with Lightroom’s HDR function. I think you’ll find a big difference with Aurora. About Luminar, it has a whole ton of filters that are totally different than what you get in Lightroom. Lightroom has the basic stuff that is the same as Adobe Camera Raw, but Luminar has tons of other filters. The presets are just a specific combination of filters, just like the way Lightroom presets work. So yes, you can easily create your own presets. But you can also take other people’s presets and deconstruct them – you can see what filters were used to achieve the end result and that helps you learn the program. Some of the Luminar filters that I love are “Accent AI” (which stands for artificial intelligence) – it does a remarkable job of magically bringing out the best in a photo, I’m always surprised at how well that works and it’s just one slider. There are also filters called dramatic, golden hour, and radiance that are totally different from what is in Lightroom. I have a whole blog post and another video that is all about Luminar if you are interested in learning more: http://annemckinnell.com/2017/11/09/luminar-2018-supernova-review-and-video-demo/
Thanks for your question!