I planned this sunrise outing just a night before. Due to the easing of COVID-19 restriction as we are entering the endemic stage here in Malaysia, I’ve decided to plan for more of these outings… and this was one of them. As I learned that this location (Kg. Baru PKNS Flat) was about to be demolished soon, I jumped on the chance to try my luck there. Relayed the info on a group chat and asked around for someone to shoot with, managed to get another 3 photographers to join in.
Next day, I reached the parking spot about 6.25am and the other photographers was there already. We walked to the flat and took the lift up to the highest floor (16th floor) and walked towards the end of the corridor, where the stairway is located. That stairway is our shooting spot. Planted our tripods and cameras setup, we were ready for the sunrise.
Since this was a cityscape shoot on a blue hour, I did all my shots in bracketing mode (3 shots in a row with 2 stops diference). Aperture was set to F8, ISO to the lowest which is 160 with 8 seconds shutter speed. Result wasn’t so great as the sky was still kinda dark. Here’s the 3 bracketed shots below.
So I waited a few minutes and took a few bracketed shots… and repeated the process again and again while waiting for the sky to change color during blue hour. The blue hour moment wasn’t too great either, as it was very cloudy and there was some slight haze too. We stopped shooting after a while, as the condition was too bright and the weather actually worsened.
Back home, after downloading my shots into Lightroom and going through all the bracketed shots.. this set below was chosen. To my surprise, the sky and clouds on this set was quite nicely burned.
As for any bracketing shots, my first step is to blend these 3 images into a single HDR image by using Photomatix. Here’s how it looks like below after merging into a single HDR image.
The blend was good, not much ghosting or too surreal… but the overall image is a bit too bright and lacking contrast. So, I did my usual stuff in Photoshop… added in some contrast and also adjusted the perspective a little (building were slightly tilted and leaning towards right side).
Lastly, back in Lightroom… i darkened the image and also sharpened it… and below is the result.
Shot with XT4 + XF 10-24mm F4 (10mm, 2-stops of bracketed shots of 5sec at F16, ISO 160)
