Out of the many times I have hiked up Hong Kong's countless hills and mountains this was the first in which I had tried combining two methods of capturing a sharp and unique cityscape photo. Garden Hill (Pak Tin) is located in the Sham Shui Po district of Kowloon, Hong Kong. It's a relatively easy hike up a few hundred steps to the top with nice city views across the Kowloon peninsula.
This time I took my Sony A7R, 35mm Sony Zeiss F2.8 and a sturdy tripod. Thirty minutes before sunset I set my aperture to the sharpest setting then attached a cable release to ensure a good shake free image. Once this was done I took three images, one focused on the closest buildings, another focused halfway through the scene and a final shot focused on the distant mountains. Once sunset came and went I waited for the city lights to turn on so the streets below were filled with the neon buzz I wanted. I repeated the focus stack technique again with the night scene to make sure the entire scene had enough depth of field.
Back at home I loaded the sunset images into Lightroom and adjusted accorindgly then opened them as layers in Photoshop. Next I selected all layers and went to edit, auto align layers. Once this was done I went back to edit to select auto blend layers. Once PS was finished all layers had been stacked into one image with the entire scene in focus and sharp. I repeated this process with the night images and proceeded to open the one sunset photo with the one night photo as layers in Photoshop. I then went through the process of aligning them, cropping if necessary and then onto the final step. I selected both layers and from the layer drop down menu I selected lighten. Once complete the resulting image showed the city lights on whilst the sky and cityscape remained lit up like the end of golden hour.
