This photo of the Duomo di Milano altar was taken last fall while in Milan on business. I am finally getting through a large number of photos taken on that trip. It was a good thing we went on this trip in the fall of 2019 instead of the original plan for the spring of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic is now in full swing in Italy and the rest of the world. My thoughts are with all of those impacted directly, and indirectly, by this pandemic especially in Italy.
Visiting the Duomo di Milano can be a royal pain in the ass when you want to get some photos. I displayed more patience than I am regularly known for in getting this shot. Waiting is not one of my strengths, and patience is not a virtue I have. For this image I had to wait over an hour to get a clean shot without tourists. This drove me a bit mad, but in the end I have to admit, it was worth the wait.
The final image is a HDR merge of 3 brackets (+/-2, 0 EV) using Aurora HDR to do the processing. Once completed, I imported the TIFF file back into On1 Photo RAW to edit and clean up the image. I used a couple of presets in my personal toolkit for this, and some local adjustments to tone down the light from the windows which was overblown. The lighting in Duomo is very contrasty, so even with brackets it was hard to not blow out the highlights in the window areas without some local love.
One thing you quickly learn shooting in old churches and landmarks like Duomo is that tripods are generally frowned on. A work-around I use on almost every trip is a Platypod. It is essentially a flat metal platform with a screw for your tripod head. Mount the head and place the whole thing on the floor. This generally wont cause the photo police to give you too much of a hassle. I highly recommend using a remote trigger, wired or smartphone app, as it will cause less attention, and thereby less hassle.
Image EXIF data: (using Laowa 15mm f/2 manual lens at f/2.8)
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Duomo di Milano Location:
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