Arc du Carrousel, Louvre Paris HDR
HDR photo of Paris’ Arc du Carrousel by the Louvre Museum.
Last weekend we were out with family doing a guided tour of Paris. Luckily I brought my camera with me and two lenses, but as it was a day trip I opted for no tripod. I just hoped for the best on handheld.
The weather was changing quite frequently between sunny and cloudy a lot of the time. As we walked through the Louvre yard and to the Tuileries gardens it was quite cloudy and with a 10-20mm lens it gives an “exploding” look to the clouds which I liked.
I took this shot handheld, 5 or 7 photos on bracketing mode and then HDR’d it with Photomatix. I retouched it in Photoshop.
Few tips for handheld HDR and minimizing tourists:
1. If you have large crowds of people that you want to make less visible (without erasing them) try de-saturating them completely in that way the yellow, red, orange and other colored clothes don’t seem to visible.
2. To take handheld HDR you need excellent lighting conditions. So open your aperture as much as you can, however this can cause two problems (a) shallow depth of field thus some parts being out of focus and (b) if there is a lot of light you will not get any under-exposed shot unless you manually reduce the exposure time.
Martin Soler Photography 
Thanks for the tips! I would never have thought of minimizing tourists by desaturating them. Did you do it selectively to the crowds or apply it to the entire photo?
My Canon will only do 3 bracketed shots (unless I reset it and take more). Do you think that the number of bracketed shots makes all that much difference? Just curious.
Love the super wide angle and the low vantage point. The empty plaza is a nice contrast to the grey sky. I’ve been wanting to buy a 10-22mm lens for a long time. Maybe the time has come…
Avital, thanks for the comment. On the crowd yet I did that selectively. I almost completely desaturated them so they actually turn out sort of black and white. On the bracketing, Canon’s system is great – much more practical than Nikon. I have to delete all the extra photos after with Nikon which is quite boring. Yes get yourself a 10-20 mm lens, it’s really fun. Honestly with that and the 50mm I am having such a great time.
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this one is really nice
I wish you’ll publish the fountain and the chuch you made in hyères this summer
Hi Jerome, great to see your pics! Yes am working on some of those from Hyeres. Will publish them shortly. 🙂
So just how hard is it to do these HDR pics?? I am about to buy a Canon Dslr so will have to become conversant with bracketing and how to use these techniques…
Hi Mark, HDR is actually quite easy. I’ve found the most simple tutorial to be those from http://photoserge.com, this is where I learned it from. You will need to get a copy of Photomatix though which is about 100 EUR. But you’ll be getting some great pics quite fast I am sure.