Title • Hagia Sophia

This is a shot of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, taken during our recent Faces and Places Photo Tour. It was dedicated in 360, became a cathedral in 562, a mosque in 1453 and then a museum in 1931. As you can see, it's a fabulous building.

As for the image: it was constructed from a three shot hand-held sequence (take a look at the original to see all three exposures) then merged in Photoshop. I did try producing an HDR image (using Photomatix Pro) but couldn't produce anything I was especially happy with so reverted to manually blending the three exposures then applying a rather large range of selective adjustments to different areas of the image. It's still not ideal – I could have done with at least one more image to capture the very brightest highlights – but I am reasonably pleased with how it turned out.

Let me know what you think.

On a different matter: today's your last chance to get a 20% discount on our online photography and post-production tutorials, so grab yourself a bargain while you can :)

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12.55pm on 9/11/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM 16mm f/5.6 1/8, 1/13, & 1/25 manual n/a evaluative 200 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 Topaz Detail minor transformation