Weekly commented photo #5 - Visitation basilica by night in Annecy

Visitation basilica by night in Annecy

I've to say the truth : i've never liked this monument. But when i arrived back in Annecy in july i saw it by night and thought it could make a beautiful photo.

I love night images but that's not what i'm doing most. I usually prefer the special lights of dawn or dusk. So that's only in january that i decided to try this image.
One afternoon i went to the lake for some dusk shots on the Imperial beach and took a long lens with me for the basilica.
When the night started to fall, i left the beach and walked along the lake until i found a nice point of view.
After one first test, exposing the shot for the highlights on the bell tower, i was sure that HDR would give a relly better image.
Keeping in one single exposure all the details in the highlights would give dark shadows on all the left part of the church. So i did 5 shots at f11 from 4 to more than 80 seconds.
As the evening was a little windy, i weighted my tripod with my bag and as usual i used mirror lockup plus a remote shutter release for each exposure. Getting sharp images with long exposures while using a long lens in the wind can be a little tricky but this night, i was lucky.
After this 5 shots, i walked deeper in the city to make images of some other monuments and also to warm me up.

I processed the raw files 2 or 3 days after with silkypix and Photomatix, trying to keep the tonemapping at a soft level.