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My most popular posts often include a breakdown of how I get some of these shots and my different photography techniques. So, with this night-building shot in Tokyo, I’ve decided to do a detailed write-up sharing a few basic techniques because shots like this are a little more complicated than your normal landscape.
Above Tokyo – Shot Breakdown
This shot was taken at the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.
The camera I used was the Sony A7r, with the Canon 16-35mm lens. And the Metabones adapter.
The shutter was 4 seconds, ISO 400 at f/10.
At some point in your career as a tourist, you’ll find yourself at some viewpoint at the top of a building or tower. There are a few in Tokyo, New York, Las Vegas, and Toronto. The one thing they always have in common is that they block you in with tinted glass and rarely let you use a tripod.
Stabilizing The Shot
The first thing you have to do is figure out a way to stabilize your camera. For this shot, I ended up using my lens case. Then, I was able to press the lens against the glass window. That helped eliminate any vertical and horizontal movement as well as any vibrations since the lens case was by no means sturdy.
If I hadn’t been in Japan and already had two pounds overweight in my luggage, I probably would have brought a steady bag or something similar.
Eliminating Reflections
Next, I had to eliminate as much reflection from the glass as possible.
There are times when it’s nice to have an extra set of hands. But I didn’t. So, I ended up using a combination of my scarf and hat wrapped around the lens to block out any light.
Even though the lens was against the glass, the glass is thick, so you still have to deal with reflections. I clearly failed to remove all of them.
Next – Processing and getting the crazy colors out of the tinted glass.
The camera Raw. . . Disgusting. . .
My Post Processing Techniques Using Photoshop, Lightroom & Nik Collection
In Lightroom: I start in Lightroom and load my lens profile to eliminate any chromatic aberrations, lens distortion, and vignetting. Then, export to Photoshop.
I’m still using CS5 in Photoshop, but once in Photoshop, I’ve been loading the Nik Collection plugins. The first one I ran was Dfine 2 to eliminate noise. It works well enough for me.
Next, I ran Color Efex Pro. (See my review here) It has great tools for removing the color cast and cross-balancing a shot.
Cross Balance is one of Color Efex Pro’s tools. It has a few different presets to quickly adjust the balance of colors in your shot: Tungsten to Daylight and Daylight to Tungsten. It eliminates the guesswork and is a cool technique for getting various looks out of your night photography.
In this case, the glass was tinted, so my results had a greenish tint. To Remove that, I used the setting Remove Color Cast. The coolest thing about these tools is that you can stack them and use them more than once.
The Results Looked Something Like This
Could I have done this same thing in Lightroom and achieved close to the same results in less than 3 seconds? Absolutely!
However, using the Nik Collection was easy because it made this adjustment onto its layer in Photoshop. I could then adjust the opacity and create layer masks for tuning, all with the original image underneath.
In Photoshop, it cannot be easy to adjust your color temperature without returning to the camera raw or fiddling with the curves or channel mixer until the end of time. And I wouldn’t have had that original layer had I done it in Lightroom.
Layer Masks
I used a layer mask to restore those original amber streetlights and brushed the streets from the original layer. The results looked like this.
Fine Tuning
For the Fine Tuning, I just used Viveza 2, which is a terrible, horrible name for a product, by the way. I’ve been using it for two weeks and still have to refer back to Photoshop to see what it’s called whenever I want to write about it.
You could have used Viveza 2 instead of Photoshop or Lightroom. The advantages of Viveza 2 aren’t huge compared to doing things by hand with a moderate to advanced Photoshop skills level. I like using Viveza because I’m still trying it out.
At this point, I also painted out as much reflection as possible with the clone stamp because the spot heal tool wasn’t working well.
Final Sharpening
For the final sharpening, I usually use this pretty basic technique: the High Pass filter. It’s in Photoshop under Filters->Others->High Pass.
To do this, create a duplicate layer or a stamp visible layer, then apply the filter with about a .5 to 1.5-pixel setting. Then, set the blending mode to Overlay, Soft Light, or Linear Light—whichever looks best to you. I usually set Linear Light, which is often too strong, and then pull it back with opacity if need be.
Back in Lightroom, I did my final crop, made a few more color tweaks, and exported it.
For copyright purposes, it’s usually a good idea to input all your photo metadata in Lightroom – keywords, copyright, photo name, description, etc.- before exporting.
That’s It! This is my basic photography technique for shooting from buildings high up in the air through tinted glass where tripods are not allowed. Easy, right?
The Final Shot – Above Tokyo
