Rick Cloran, HonPSA, MPSA  


Cathedral of Learning by Rick Cloran, HonPSA, MPSA

January 2018 - Cathedral of Learning

About the Image(s)

This is based on a five shot bracket at one stop intervals around a base exposure of 4 sec. at F16 and iso 400 using Canon 1DX MK II and 16-35 F4 lens at 16 mm (metadata shows 17 for some odd reason). The initial blend was done using merge to HDR in Lightroom. The resulting image was tuned in Lightroom and sent to DxO Viewpoint 3 for perspective correction, brought back into LR and then sent to CC 2018 for finishing. The lighting in the ceiling from this angel was overly bright and required a fair amount of work to balance it back to the rest of the image. The lighting in the hall is crazy and the colors in the walls showed some of the many different types. At these shutter speeds, you know I had motion. I took the best image I had of the central table and swapped that in via masking after I worked the lighting to match the blended image. I know the cut off guy down in the lower left will bug some folks, but I decided to leave him. For those who didn’t make it to Pittsburgh, this is part of the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus.


This round’s discussion is now closed!
4 comments posted




Lisa Cuchara   Lisa Cuchara
wow, lots of effort to capture and create this one!

The perspective and table masking are excellent - kudos!

I would darken the top ceiling a tad because it is bright and keep my eye up there rather than the bottom third of the image which has a lot of interest.

The half man at the bottom does not bother me too much, but you could flip the right side and mask him out if you wanted   Posted: 01/13/2018 20:00:12
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Brad Ashbrook   Brad Ashbrook
Very cool image with a lot going on.. The perspective is quite dramatic and the colors do look a little muted. I like Lisa's idea of additional contrast and people removal. I like the texture of the table, it really stands out. So I would like to see a little tighter composition with less ceiling and more windows in the back.   Posted: 01/13/2018 21:57:07



Tom McCreary   Tom McCreary
(Groups 7 & 32 & 57)
Really great job of capturing this very interesting location. The perspective looks perfect. I do agree with Lisa and Brad. I cropped off the top on Lisa's adjustments. The ceiling is great, but is not the real subject.   Posted: 01/16/2018 10:16:57
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Max Burke   Max Burke
Rick, great job on this with all the lighting difficulties. The colors and exposure overall was great. I know it tells something leaving the students in at the bottom but what Lisa did seems to have worked well. I do like seeing the whole ceiling as it gives me a feeling of how large this hall must be.   Posted: 01/24/2018 23:26:29