MILWAUKEE CITY HALL RE-REVISITED

I was not entirely happy with my last visit to City Hall, earlier this month.  First of all, there were Christmas decorations all over the place, including evergreen boughs on the railings of each of the balconies.  Second, there was a very large Christmas tree positioned in the center of the atrium.  As a result, it prevented me from taking certain shots, including one straight up from the floor of the atrium.  And, third, in looking over my last set of photos, I realized that what most got my attention were the curved railings at either end of the atrium and that wider views of the balconies were too busy.

So . . . Here is my ceiling shot.

And here is a shot of the curved railings.

The other thing I did was to experiment with some high dynamic range (HDR) shots.  As a reminder, these involve taking multiple shots of the exact same scene that are different only in terms of their exposure.  These differences are in terms of the length of the exposure; the aperture remains constant so that the depth of field does not change.  Then the images are blended using post processing software.  In these shots I blended three images, one at a normal exposure, one exposed for four times as long (overexposed), and one exposed for one-fourth as long (underexposed).  I really didn't know what to expect.  Here is one of the shots.  First, as a comparison, is the single, normal exposure.

And here is the HDR shot.

I was expecting a significant increase in contrast in the HDR shot, but I didn't really see much difference.  What I did see was an increase in color, particularly in the upper floors.

Here is another shot that illustrates that result even more strongly.  First is the normal shot.

And this is the HDR version.

Here the colors are ranging from yellow at the bottom to a pink hue at the top.  I kind of like it.