Los Angeles is such an iconic city.  Most of the shots in my ongoing LA Series are about the individual buildings and there individual beauty.   There are  many well documented places to take photo’s of the city.  This one here is taken from across the 110 freeway.  Taken over a fence looking south/east.  The sun is rising to the left which gave me the lighting I was looking for and created the left to right shadows which helped create the depth.  This is a 45 second exposure with a clear blue sky there isn’t any cloud movement or advantage to the long exposure.

The shot:

F/11 at 45 Seconds, ISO 100, 24-105L @ 24mm.

Tripod mounted, 10 stop ND filter, Cable shutter release

Post Processing:

• Shot in Raw converted in Adobe Raw and brought into photoshop
• Topaz Denoise used on entire photo
• Selections made and saved-City, Sky, Each individual building, foreground, each tower of Bonaventure hotel
• Silver Efex Pro 2.0 for B&W conversion
• Sky Selection processed in curves and gradient tool used for gradient of sky
• Each building processed through curves and gradient tool to enhance front to back lighting
• Foreground selection darkened to remove any distractions
• Free Transform tool used to remove lens distortion (Tilt shift lens someday to remove this step)
• High pass sharpening for buildings only

Before and After photo below:  Click on image to enlarge.