In Prague there are many towers that provide beautiful and unique views of the city below. Powder Tower — from where this shot is composed — sits a little outside the crowded city center and is visited less frequently than the other main attractions. Though not all directions provide stellar views, if you catch a night at the right time, with a sky that produces good colors and ample ambient light, you get a wonderful late blue hour spectacle. You also get a clear view of Tyn Church and the beautiful Prague Castle.
It’s also worth mentioning that in Prague, they are very lenient towards the use of tripods. Even inside these crowded towers, the staff won’t give you any trouble for setting up your rig. The only complications are the narrow passageways and the steady flow of people moving around. Try to be courteous and accommodating with a traditional tripod setup or bring something smaller like a Joby Gorillapod.
Technical Mumbo Jumbo
Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: 28-300 f/3.5-5.6
ISO: 100
Exposure: 8 seconds at f/8
Technique and Details: Digital Blending using 3 exposures. 90% of this image is made up of the single neutral exposure with small parts of exposures -1 and +1 added to correct areas of extreme shadow and highlight. After the initial blending, I recovered a bit more of the shadow details using The Detail Extractor plugin from NIK Color Effects 4 and sharpened the foreground elements with NIK Sharpener Pro. While some additional color correction was applied, the sky had already had this pink and blue tone.
Software: Lightroom, Photoshop, NIK
Espresso: Lavazza Crema e Gusto
