Let's take a look at the cityscape photograph. So in this photo I wanted to take a picture of this beautiful ship and this beautiful skyline. This is shot in Miami and it shot at night well after the sun headset. Now, let me show you my settings, press the I key. Here we have 72 seconds f 22 ISO 100. Now I wanted to get a very long exposure to get this water as still as possible.

That's why I went with the 72 seconds. By getting the water as still as possible I was able to create perfect reflections of the buildings and of the ship and this water. Let me open up this exposure so you can see what I'm talking about a little better. Here we go. So By creating this by making this water as still as possible with a very long exposure, I was able to create this dis perfect reflection so the buildings on the water and also of the ship since it's my main composition. Now since I have the exposure all the way up, let's talk about leading lines.

So here I was, I wanted to use this curve to guide the viewer into the skyline. I also use this buildings to bring the viewer into the skyline as well, since the skyline is my main composition, this is my main, the what's mainly going to tell my story, and I'm using the puddle as an interesting way to bring the viewer into the image. Now when I was actually standing over here, and I I turned around and I saw this huge puddle, so I came over here And that's how I was able to capture you better remember, you have to move around and kind of always think of how you can invite the viewer into these great compositions that you're going to be able to tell your story. So I did shoot a few exposures from here, I wasn't really happy with them. I came to this corner and shot this way.

I wasn't really happy with it until I turned around and then I saw the puddle then I was like, wow, that's something. So that's how I was able to create this. And again, our leading lines, we use this concrete parking lot or this road to start bringing the eye in this way. And this this buildings right here also used as leading lines into the composition. I think the main leading line here is this curb. Now I shot this with my tiny tripod and I was right on this curb.

And this will bring the eyes right into the composition. Now, by being so low to the water, I was able to decrease this, the width of this road, if I would have shot it higher with my tripod from maybe up here, this would have look a lot bigger. So the lower you are when you're shooting a reflection, the lesser The, the, the gap you're gonna have between your subject and your subject inside that reflection. So keep that in mind. If I would have been dead level with the water, I would have actually had to put my tripod in the water but if I would have done so this gap would have been completely gone and the buildings would have been reflecting on top of each other. Now I did not want to do that I wanted to create some separation by using by by seeing this road and that's why I went on the curb instead of in the water.

So that's that let me get rid of this settings press in my Ikki. And now let me explain to you guys the importance of your profile corrections and the transform slider here in for cityscapes in architectural photography. Now I'm going to leave my exposure up, I am not going to edit it just yet. I want to start editing this photo with the transform panel. Now, when you're doing architectural photography, or any kind of building photography, your buildings are usually going to be leaning. This can be corrected in the field by tilting your camera up or down accordingly and that will usually fix this.

Now not every time you're going to be able to do such a thing. So Lightroom has built in this beautiful transform panel here for you to do so manually after you After you take the shot and get back home. So what you want to do, you want to come to your transform panel. And watch what happens when I click this auto button right here. Look at that, my buildings immediately get straightened out beautifully get straightened out, I don't have to do anything else to them. Now 90% of the time, this is going to work for all of your for all of your cityscape photos, but the times that don't let me click that off.

You can do it all manually here. And first, you're going to start on the vertical. And basically what I'm looking at is I'm looking at the lines right here that are parallel to the side of my image. And then you're going to go to horizontal, maybe a little bit on some of them, not all of them. And now you can start rotating. And what I'm looking at there, I'm looking at this building And the site and the site of this building.

Let me do a little less right here. And maybe, maybe right about there, that looks really, really close. So now we can come up here and crop it according accordingly. Now, let me click out of that. And as you can see, we just did the same exact thing, but we did it all manually. So when this auto button does not work for you, you can do it always manually.

With all these sliders. It takes a little bit more time. It takes a little bit of thinking and a little bit of creativity, but you can always do it here. Now I cannot tell you how important this is to architectural and cityscape photography. When you're doing this kind of work for a client and it's a high end client. The first thing they're going to look at is you're leaning buildings.

If you Have leaning buildings, I can assure you, you're going to be axed out and they're going to go to the next photographer. So now let me reset these. This sliders, let me just reset the entire image. I'll come back here. Let me open up that exposure again for you. And then I'll come back to transform.

We did it manually, but since this auto button works so well, we'll just leave it there. Automatically boom done. Again. It's very, very important in cityscape photography, architectural photography, to have your profiles to have it everything corrected and everything parallel to each other how it should be. You don't go to you don't go to the city and and you see leaning buildings, unless you're in Amsterdam, which is actually kind of cool. But this is the best way to do it.

And this is What you should be doing always, unless you're trying to be artistic and you want those leaning buildings, and that's fine as well. But this is the the best way to do things. And everything is right here in Lightroom in the transform button, so when I'm doing any kind of cityscape with buildings, I immediately come to this panel. So once I do that, let's come to your profile lens corrections here. So we'll remove chromatic aberration, and we're gonna enable our profile corrections, this will only warp it and make the image that much more appealing. So those really are the most important things when it comes to this sort of photography.

As you can see, within looser leading lines, everything still looks really really good. And it looks correct now looks how it should be. So now we're going to come to our basic panel, I'm going to reset the exposure and now we can start editing the image. So now first of all, I want to do is open up my shadows. As you can see it's still quite dark and I want to be able to see a little bit more of my photo. So I'm going to come up to my exposure and I'm going to bring the exposure up a little bit and I think that looks right about maybe a little more.

Maybe right about there. That looks really nice. Next thing I want to do is I want to bring up my contrast. Now remember my contrast gives it that gives it that that realistic look, it gives it that punch, it gives it three dimension. It makes it just much nicer to give it this contrast. Now as you can see my image got a little darker once I give it contrast so you can bring up the exposure a tad more.

It's all depending how much of the of these of this road you want to see and how much of this puddle you want to see. I want people to be able to tell that this This is a puddle, and I didn't put this in Photoshop or anything. So that's why I want to bring it up just to tap more, just so you can see the the road here and the end of this puddle. Now here's my highlights slider and I'm going to bring it down. What I'm looking at here is I'm looking at the inside of this building, and also at the inside of this little units, I want to be able to tell what's in there. So as you can see, if we bring it if we reset it by clicking the word twice, this is all blown out.

Right? These are all blown out. Most importantly this big one is blown out. Also this little lights are blown out. So I'm looking for definition in our Starburst effect here that we created by using the F 22. So when you're at F 22 you're going to create this beautiful star Birth Defects on your lights.

I'll get rid of that. And that's what I'm looking at with my highlights. I'm looking at the inside of this building and my little stars. So I'll start bringing them down. And the building looks pretty good right there and my stars are more. You can see him a lot more now.

So I really like that. That looks pretty good. I'm going to leave it there. And next thing I want to do, I'm going to leave my blacks and my whites alone. I don't think I need to do anything. I think our highlights took care of that for us.

So now I'm just going to come to my vibrance and I'm going to give this a little more color. I'll bring it right about there. And that looks really really nice. Now once I do this, what you can do is come back up to your temperature slider, you should the night photography and cityscape photography. The white balance is really it gets thrown around. random little bit.

So I always shoot in auto white balance. But here you can either call it a warm it up a little bit, or cool it down a little bit. Now if you're, if when you pull it down, it turns a little bit purple or to purple for your taste, then what you can do is you can use this 10th slider and take that purple down a little bit. Now that looks pretty correct, that looks about right, a plus six here, but now in Miami, the sky always looks purple. It's such a colorful place and all these lights reflecting the ocean and makes our sky look really really purple. So I'm actually going to double click on the tent and reset it.

And to me that looks more accurate than then bringing it down. But you know, it's entirely up to you how your image looks and the kind of look and feel you want to give that image so I think that looks really nice. So let's go to our before and after pressing our Waikiki and look at that what a difference. So this is one exposure one image, and look how much we did how much we brought out. The most important thing being our, our, our corrections or profile corrections, look at these leaning buildings, they're no longer they're no longer leaning, and they actually look realistic. Now, look at this beautiful reflection.

You can actually see that it's a reflection now before you didn't really know that's because I was I was exposing for my buildings here. Look how beautiful that looks. Just very few. Very few edits here. Our most important edit been our our transform button here. So always remember with cityscape, photography or transform button is always going to be the most Important.

And when that doesn't do it, when that doesn't strain the building's out, just do it manually with the sliders. Very, very, very important. Let me press the Y key to get out of there. And let's finish up this photo by coming into the detail panel. And I just want to sharpen it up to about 70. And now masking slider hold down the Option key and bring it up a little bit.

Now what's White is being sharpened and what's black is being left alone. Like all that, and there you have it, our buildings are sharp, everything is sharp. Now, let me address this little dots right here. These are stars and some might be little dead pixels. You can take him off by using your Spot Removal Tool, visualized spots, and just start taking them off or you can just leave them to me doesn't bother me, it looks like little stars, maybe get rid of the most, the ones you can see that are quite big, entirely taste Now if they if there were a sensor dust spots, then I would say remove those to me those little stars in those little lights do not bother me. So I think that looks finished beautifully.

You can come to the effects and give it a tiny bit of vignette. I don't think you need to, if you want to be subtle about it, maybe like a minus seven. I won't even say less like a minus four minus five. And that looks really good. I'm very very happy with that photo. So let's click before and after one last time.

There's before and there's after. again guys, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to get this building's not leaning and it is something that the amateur doesn't see but as you train your eye injuries start to become a pro. You will start to work and catch these things in the field right away. So now you know how to fix them. And I am very, very, very happy with this image