I took a lot of HDR photos while in Greece but I'm still struggling with processing them because it takes a lot of time. In the past it was easier - I captured photos, opened them in Photomatix Pro, dragged a few sliders in it and saved the result. Then I opened it in Gimp and applied some sharpening and I was done. It took 30 second - 5 minutes per photo. Nowadays it's more complicated - I first apply some preliminary adjustments in Lightroom, open my exposures in Photomatix where I spend a couple of minutes making sure I preserve all details I want. Then I open my image in Photoshop and spend up to a few hours polishing it. Now this might sound like a boring task or like I'm complaining. But in fact - I'm not. I find this creative process a great fun. The reason I spend so much time on a single shot is because I like every photo to look the way I saw it. It doesn't mean to reflect reality but to reflect my view (maybe even imagination?) of a place or situation. In the past I wasn't much into that - I just wanted my photo to have nice colors and to be quite sharp. But there was no vision involved :)
Today HDR photo was taken in Heraklion port. This Venetian style port is the most interesting and beautiful part of the city in my opinion.
Technical details:Camera: Canon 5D MK III
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 105 mm
Aperture: f/8.0
Exposure time: 1/125 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 5
E.V. Step: 1
Flash used: no
Tripod: no
Filters: circular polarizing filter
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC
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