The halls of Versailles Palace are quite impressive, but not always easy to photograph without HDR due to the contrast between light and dark. Daytime photos often have very under-exposed areas of very over-exposed areas. So HDR is a great tool to get a great exposure and capture everything we can see.

I was recently in Versailles with my wife and baby and of course, I has to take my camera with me. Would not want to miss any great photo opportunities in such a great place.

For weight reasons I decided to only take my 50mm lens with me and try my luck with that. Carrying my son and all that comes with travelling with a baby, a little less weight is worth lots. Now while I am quite happy with lots of the photos I took, I do think a place like this deserves a wider angle lens. So maybe I’ll go back one day with my zoom.

This photo is of the hallway below the Galleries de Batailles, and I couldn’t find out the name of this particular place so if anyone can assist, I’ll be very thankful.

A few people were lining up to take pictures of it and several were complaining about the two staff that were walking down the hall waiting for them to leave, but I liked how they add a human and dynamic touch to an otherwise totally static shot.

I took the photo handheld, at a pretty high ISO in order to get all the shots sharp (especially the long exposure) and shot three photos which I HDR’d with Photomatix and then retouched with Topaz to give it more character.

And the result is quite nice in my opinion.

Handheld HDR photo tip:

– While we’re always trying to get our landscapes with the lowest ISO possible for the least noise possible, when you’re doing it handheld you’re better off increasing the ISOs above your comfort zone and cleaning up the noise with Topaz or other tools after. Photomatix adds lots of noise in it’s HDR process so you will have a noise issue in any case. In this photo I used the noise to make the photo more textured which is another option.

17 Apr This entry was published on April 17, 2011 at 1:48 pm. It’s filed under Buildings, Canon 5D Mark II, HDR, interior photo, Monument, Paris, People, photography and tagged castle, corridor, hall, HDR, Paris, versailles, walking. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.