Montmartre is such a wonderful area of Paris - photographs around every corner. This is a fine viewpoint of Sacre Coeur, but you gave yourself quite a problem with exposure Susan, the direct light on the domes/towers of the church are blown out. I always have my Canon 5D Mk3 set on spot meter and expose for highlights - the PS shadows/highlight sliders and curves almost always come to my rescue.   Posted: 09/06/2022 12:05:45

Susan, interesting vantage point to photograph this iconic structure in Montmartre-Paris. As David pointed out, the church is mostly overexposed and with no detail in those areas. I like the fact of the buildings in the foreground framing the church, but they are overpowering the main subject even though they are dark by the light conditions. With the intention of making the church stand out in the image I cropped it considerably but still leaving the buildings in the foreground frame it. also with the masking tool I decreased the brightness somewhat, but was unable to recuperate detail in the overexposed areas   Posted: 09/06/2022 13:51:49

It takes two to agree and a third one to disagree. I think Susan's crop is too wide on the left because there is a large dark area that does not add anything. I think Isaac's crop is too narrow because it eliminates that wonderful golden reflection that highlights that facade and provides contrast to the cathedral. This is a very-high contrast image and, like my shot of the organ in the cathedral of Santiago, could have been handled better with an HDR composite. Susan, check your camera's manual to see if your camera has a setting for making 3 or 5 successive bracketed images, one stop apart. The other way to deal with a strong highlight like this, especially if it covers aa fairly large area and is on an important object of the image is to set exposure for the highlight and deal with the underexposed areas in the rest of the picture in post processing.   Posted: 09/07/2022 14:47:11

This beautiful building begs to be photographed, but it's so bright white that it creats a difficult exposure situation with the foreground buildings in the shade. I love the warm light on the building on the left. I would definately use HDR in this situation. Most cameras have a exposure bracketing function so you can make multiple exposures. You need the software to combine the three (or five) exposures. I use this technique a lot. Thanks, for sharing this interesting image, Susan!   Posted: 09/07/2022 15:14:43

Sasan, I noticed that you used the speed of 1/2500, not sure whether this was taken in the car. Lowering the speed would help to bring in more lights. I used the auto mode in Camera Raw which helped to bring in more details on the dark parts.   Posted: 09/08/2022 06:33:03

Pam, Interesting how much detail you recovered by just using Auto in Camera Raw.   Posted: 09/15/2022 20:11:55