Post-processing: Matters When Picture is Dull

I took this picture from a high window of Hagia Sophia, holding the camera up high, lens touching the window and without properly seeing what I was shooting. The only smart move I made that day was to keep the remote trigger cable attached to the camera, independent of the exposure value (i.e. long exposure). It becomes very handy, when you are trying to shoot in awkward positions.

Although some birds decorate the composition (after like 3-4 sets of bracketing) and the sun behind the clouds make it more meaningful, it is nonetheless a dull picture unfortunately. Wrong light, too many walls, etc...Well, you can't do much with that kind of a picture, except playing with it for fun :)

So I did:

I first gave it a medieval look by adding sepia-tone.

Then converted it to HDR, so that the dark colors come alive. It will also help the clouds to be more distinguished.

Now we are almost done with it. However the walls are still there. So, we crop a little, so that the wall edges point the main subject...the domes. And added a touch of contrast to it...and here you have the final image:

The moral of the story is obviously NOT 'post-processing rocks', the moral of the story is 'the skill is to take the picture right, so that you spend minimum time with minimum alteration at post-processing.' Otherwise, all you do is to create some sort of a (maybe) art, but it is not an exercise of good photography....as seen in this example :)