Study Group 7
Tony Tam

January 2012

Title - Hong Kong City Panorama and Night View

How I did it:

Camera: Nikon D90
Location: Hong Kong
Time: 12/2011

I have been in Hong Kong for a month from Nov. to Dec., so I decided to submit a day and night images of Hong Kong.  I created a montage of Hong Kong city with one panoramic view and two of night view.  I am not quite satisfy with this trip myself, I didn't take many photos, because the air is not clear, smog over the sky, so it's hard to get the clear image. The first panorama was taken from Hong Kong island Peak toward to Kowloon side. As you see that Kowloon is not clear, because the thick smog over it. I tried by tweaking and made it clear by PS. This panorama used 3 frames to combine and replace the sky with the original #2, which was taken on the same place of Hong Kong Peak. The main photo was exposed with f10, 1/100. The sky photo was f13, 1/125. Two night view are took from Kowloon toward to Hong Kong island. I used f20,10 seconds to expose.
 
Original Images are below.

 COMMENTS:

Kenneth Deitcher, MD, FPSA	Great images! The pan image can be improved by darkening the sky and the entire image by creating a vignette of the edges to direct your eyes to the main interest, the buildings. Some of the buildings don't appear to be perfectly vertical.
Elaine Icklan	Of the three, the panorama is excellent considering the atmospheric conditions under which you were working. The composition is unique due to the framing with hillsides on either end. Too bad the center tree at the bottom was in the way. Whether the hard work of judiciousness cloning could be used to eliminate this would be up to you as the time to accomplish this might be too great. The two night scenes are well done and are cropped carefully avoiding cutting any buildings in half.
Barbara Mallon	The colorful night views pull all attention from the less-saturated panorama. I really like the night views especially the second one. It is a stand alone winner. Can you add a bit more reflection at the bottom? The panorama feels cut off at the bottom. I think it would be more effective if a bit more were added to make the light valley on the bottom left a stronger leading line into the picture.
Carolyn Schlueter	Wow Tony ... you continue to dazzle us with your Hong Kong photos! Love the images you have created from your original pictures and my only comment would be to have less white space between your photos and perhaps add little but full drop shadows around each of them to make the images pop a little more. Terrific creations!
Adrienne Bergen	I love the panorama. You did a great job incorporating the sky image with the cityscape image. The buildings look like they are being kissed by the sun. I like the foreground interest of the hills but I find the dark tree in the center spoils that portion of the image for me, wish there was a way to remove it. The nightscapes are beautiful, lots of color and fun reflections.
Tom McCreary	Too bad that you did not have better skies. However, you did another outstanding job of combining and editing the images. Your photoshop work also really helped the night images.

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Member Bio

Tony Tam - Biography I retired in 2007 when in was 71 years old.  Before I retired I was a mechanical engineer.  I attended college in St. Petersburg, Russia (Formerly Leningrad, Soviet Union). Photography is my major hobby for my whole life.  I started my photography when I was about 8 years old when I was in elementary school.   Because my father owned a photography studio I had a chance to learn photo development skill in a darkroom from my early childhood.   I continued my photo hobby in high school, college and now. After I retired I got more time to do my favorite photography.  I had a lot of photo trips with my friends. I use a Camera Nikon D200, D90, and Sony F707.

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