Paris—No 7

Notre Dame is probably my second favorite cathedral in the world.  I have visited it every time I have been in Paris.  There is just something about it that I find amazing.  Yet, even though I have visited it so many times, I had never taken the tour to the top.  If you have never done this and are planning a trip to Paris, I highly recommend it.  But, be prepared to do a little climbing!

One of my very favorite films of all times is the Hunchback of Notre Dame (it’s the 193? Edition).  The story is the same in all the versions but the 193? version has some great scenes at the top of the cathedral that show close-ups of the statues and the Paris cityscape in the background.  The film is in high-contrast, back and white.

Here I tried to duplicate that look.  I wanted a lot of detail in the statues, a little less in the cityscape and then virtually none in the sky. After making basic adjustments in Lightroom 4, I used nik Detail Extractor and Tonal Contrast filters on the image.  I then masked off the effect—50% grey on the cityscape portion and black on the sky—thus, decreasing the effect on those two areas of the photo.

In the black and white version, I increased the contrast and darkened the black point.

Naturally, I prefer the black and white version, but which one do you prefer?

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D800, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 at 32mm, ISO 800, f/16 at 1/60^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom 4—applied Vivid preset during import, set white and black points, increased shadows and decreased highlights and added vibrance and clarity.

Photoshop CS5—see above.