Spoilt for Choice

I was definitely spoilt for choice today. A reasonable sunrise; this very atmospheric sunset ; and then a trip to the 'brand new' Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham (You'll know it as the National Indoor Arrena) for a Michael Buble concert. The concert was the highlight. Two hours of wall to wall classics, all being filmed for a forthcoming DVD. He even got us to sing the Beatle song 'All you need is love', twice, so they could get a good recording (I'm expecting royalties!)

Technical: This required a 3 stop hard ND grad to control the sky and even then Lightroom was used to tone down the highlights and lift the shadow detail. I try to make the shot believable, but I question this sometimes, sitting in front of the monitor in reflection. It actually proves what fantastic visual instruments our eyes are and how quickly they adapt to different light levels. I remember thinking the stubble pattern would help the shot yet when I first viewed the raw file there was hardly any detail in the field. It also indicates how much you can recover in detail from a raw file.