Every time I see the Flatiron Building in New York, I’m completely awed.  It’s a 22 story triangle.  And as amazing as that is today, I try to imagine what it must have been like when it was built back in 1902.  That’s years before Ford created the model T.  I picture horses and hats galore, and this incredible building piercing the sky.

I spent a good hour making this image from four exposures.  I used Lumenzia‘s PreBlend to stack three exposures, a couple of light luminosity selections to paint back highlight detail for the windows, used the vanishing point clone tool in Photoshop to light up a dark window, evened out the sky  tone/color with a lights luminosity mask and darkening curve, added a vignette with Lumenzia, added the moon from another exposure (it was moving so fast that it was behind the building by the time the lights came on), and added some detail to the shadow side of the building using the pro contrast and bleach bypass filters in Color Efex Pro.  It’s funny, I used to use Color Efex Pro extensively, but I find myself more and more creating similar, if not more realistic, effects directly in Photoshop using luminosity masks.  I probably could have easily used some dark midtone masks to open up and add pop to the shadow side of the building, but sometimes I just like to play to see if I come up with something different using a variety of methods.  All exposures and filters were added as smart objects, for a completely non-destructive layered file, so that I might come back later and try processing it slightly differently.  Sometimes I find that my mood changes quite a bit after spending more time with an image.