Civilian War Memorial at night

[lennyl]

I passed by the memorial very frequently on this trip to Singapore. Please let me know how I can improve the shot (all aspects, including setup, composition and post processing). TIA.

Shot was taken on the lawn in front of the memorial. Ultra-wide was used so that the memorial will not be completely dwarfed by the hotel towers.

Details:

EOS 20D with EF-S 10-22mm @ 12mm
Av mode, f/11, 5 sec (+0 EC)
ISO 400 (should have used 100 or 200... thought I checked earlier, apparently not)
Tripod, wireless remote, mirror lock up. No camera NR used (some NR applied in ACR).
Auto focus on memorial (my night vision sucks big time, manual focusing is not an option)

A touch of perspective correction was applied, and image cropped (original has memorial in the center for minimum distortion). Hightlight recovery is used to darken the brightly lit mid-section of the memorial.

 

[lennyl]

Another attempt, this one was severely distorted due to ultra wide, and had quite a lot of perspective correction (and cropping after that) applied to it.

Canon 20D
EF-S 10-22mm @ 10mm
6 sec, f/11, -2/3 EV, Aperture priority

 

[denniskee]

i like #2 better because it kind of standout compare to #1 which seem to blend in with the buildings.

like the wb, did you set cwb using the pillars or adjust it during pp?

 

[lennyl]

i like #2 better because it kind of standout compare to #1 which seem to blend in with the buildings.

like the wb, did you set cwb using the pillars or adjust it during pp?

Hi, Dennis. Thanks for the comments. Looking at the images again, I agree that the memorial is not very prominent in the first photo. I don't think there's enough emphasis on it in the second photo with it so far off to the side, though. Maybe I can make another trip there to look around all angles to see if there's a better shot. I tried shooting it alone but that shot looks extremely boring so I won't bother posting it here.

I almost always shoot raw and adjust the WB in pp - I'm not experienced enough, and prefer to postpone decisions such as these to when I can concentrate on them.