This shot was taken during ‘Melbourne Open House’ in 2013. I was on the Melbourne Town Hall tour. The shot was taken from the level 2 portico looking towards Collins and Swanston Street. It is an HDR composition, meaning that I took 5 shots in very quick succession, the exposure on each was 1 stop apart. I subsequently merged them into a HDR (High Dynamic Range) image using HDR software called Photomatix. 

The beauty of using this technique is that you can add depth richness to your colours and assists with extreme highlights (possibly blowing out or appearing to be white - without any detail) or losing details from the shadows, like beneath the store verandah.

As so often happens, when I took the shot, I didn’t realise the interesting nuances :

1. It had been raining and the sun had come out, which gives life to the road via the reflections

2. The shadow of the Manchester Unity Building on the Wales  Corner building adds another point of interest

3. The iconic Melbourne trams

4. The people

Many would comment that I should have waited until the tram travelling up Collins Street towards Spring street had advanced a little further to be more prominent, however, to be brutally honest, I was on the portico for a short time only and simply took some shots in that direction.

Th