St Patrick's Cathedral on New Years Eve

Concept

When I purchased my first digital camera and started experimenting with digital processing, I used a similar snapshot of Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral looking through the gardens of Parliament House to experiment with various black and white digital processing techniques. At the time I was using an earlier version of Adobe Photoshop and a lovely plug-in called Exposure from Alien Skin. A print of this original image became one of my favorites and often drew comment in my old-fashioned hardcopy portfolio. Two years later, I wanted to refresh my version of this image using newer equipment and accumulated experience to improve the original.

Setup

Handheld and standing in the middle of busy Spring Street Melbourne to catch the spires of the cathedral bathed in late afternoon sun. Taken on New Years Eve 2008, the city was alive with revelers enjoying warm sun, good friends and cold beer.  

Camera Setup

Canon G9 with polarizing lens at f3.5 ISO80 1/1000sec in aperture priority mode.

Processing

Adobe Lightroom does a great job processing black and white and - in this case - duotone images, but will not generate convincing blur and grain effects. Further, while its artificial vignette effect works great on uncropped images, producing a realistic vignette effect but its cropped image vignette effect looks muddy, unpleasant and obvious.
Consequently the fantastic vintage film effects which I experimented with extensively on the original photo are just not possible using Lightroom. While the Canon G9s small sensor introduces its own subtle grain effect which Lightroom can either enhance or suppress, the Canon G9 lens at f/3.5 is stunningly crisp with no chromatic aberration and minimal distortion. Consequently, a sharp, detailed look is the most pleasing aesthetic for this shot.

Improving the photo

One of the looks I enjoyed most about my early experiments was a soft, grainy, mushroom coloured Sepia effect produced by Alien Skin Exposure. This sepia look was warm, evocative and familiar. Lightroom just cannot reproduce this look.
In my view, more extensive processing will not yield a more rewarding image as the shot remains a basic snapshot. 

Apart from the personal danger of standing in a busy CBD street, getting the shot was a easy and fun and processing took about 30 mins to get the results I was after. Viewing the original however reminds me of the excitement of learning new techniques which I felt at the time - and isnt that what these personal photography projects are about?