The Chinese are fascinated with height. Skyscrapers are a given (the entire foreground of this photo was farmland just over 20 years ago), but they seem to be blown away by tall people. I visited the Jin Mao Tower (the one in the front that looks like a golden asparagus spear) with a buddy of mine. I'm pretty tall, but my buddy absolutely towers over the locals at 6'6". When he'd come around some corner and surprise some group of women, they'd just look up and laugh at how huge he was. So while, while were waiting in line to ride the elevator to the top of Jin Mao, there was a cardboard model of the tower and Chinese tourists were lining up to take my friend's picture next to it - as if he were some giant looming over Shanghai. Technical details: Single exposure edited with Lightroom and my Lumenzia panel in Photoshop (http://gregbenzphotography.com/lumenzia/).
I got up at 5:30, walked down the street from the Sheraton, and had this beautiful view almost to myself (you can see the ghost of a family that got up early to enjoy it as well). This is Millennium Park, the Cloud Gate (aka, the "bean"), and the many skyscrapers of downtown Chicago. This is my first HDR using Nik's HDR Efex Pro, and I've got to say I'm pretty impressed. It's the first HDR software I've used that I liked as least as much as Photomatix. Very intuitive, I was done with the tone mapping less than 10 minutes with no instructions or prior use. I really liked the "u-point" technology for controlling the brightness of the reflection of the sky and clouds, really helped save me time. Of course, I did all the typical Photoshop work I always do after to bring the effects back closer to reality. Very happy I picked up the whole suite of Nik software at WPPI...
