National Cathedral, Washington DC, at Night

For quite some time I have had a lingering shoot on my photography work list that I just never seemed to get around to checking off.  In January I was finally able to make it happen, and made it out of the house very early on a Saturday morning to photograph the National Cathedral in Washington DC at night.

For a long time I had visualized the shots I wanted.  The key parts of the shoot included shooting at night, shooting in winter when the trees were barren, and shooting on the weekend when I could easily find a parking spot.  Combining these three prerequisites with the need to get up well before sunrise kept this shoot on my work list for much longer than most other planned shoots.

My shoot was successful, and these are a few of the photographs I was able to make.  I particularly like the way the stark trees interplay with the cathedral.  And with very little color information, it made complete sense to process them as black and white.

Each of the photographs are 5 shot HDR images taken with a Canon 17-40mm f/4.0 L at 17 mm.  I am also pleased with the HDR processing.  I am finally closing in on my goal of producing HDR images that don’t look like HDR images while still taking advantage of the real value of HDR; bringing out the details in both the highlights and shadows.

Have fun and go make some great photography.

Craig