Waiting in the Wings by Otto Berkeley

I last photographed the Royal Festival Hall during an Open House tour nearly four years ago. Since then, the location's stunning 2,500-seat auditorium underwent a renovation, and during a recent filming session I was fortunate enough to be allowed inside with fellow photographer Peter Li to capture the scene once again. Besides having more time to set up and test different angles, the main advantages of this visit were the option to use a tripod, as well as the chance to incorporate a single person, who for this image was the organist being filmed, and who, although so distant he's barely visible, seemed to provide a sense of the auditorium's enormity. The final image is a blend of eight bracketed exposures, captured midway through the rear stalls and taking in the front and side stalls, boxes and acoustic sails along the ceiling, as well as the dramatically lit stage and choir. The main challenge was the range of light across the scene, so bracketing and blending the exposures using luminosity masks in Photoshop ensured I'd be able to recover shadow details among the seats -- including the names on the back of the seats -- as well as preserving the grain and texture of the wood panelling along the stage. With the exposures blended, I then used my brighter exposures and a combination of linear and radial gradient masks to gently increase the midtone exposure along the front stalls and acoustic sails. When colour-grading the image, my main aim was to convey the contrast between the warm light across the stage and the moody shadows among the seats. Using Colour Balance adjustments with masks generated via Apply Image, I increased the blue tones in the shadows and the yellow tones in the highlights. I then used several low-opacity Colour Lookups set to Soft Light to emphasise this palette: the Candlelight preset for the highlights along the stage, Crisp Warm for the midtones in the front stalls, and Foggy Night for a softer and colder finish in the shadows. Inside Nik's Silver Efex Pro, I increased the structure and contrast among the seats and boxes in order to emphasise their repeating patterns, but I lowered both of these along the stage, as I felt a softer and brighter finish in the background would help to create a dreamy sense of what it's like to enjoy a performance here. The final result hopefully captures the scale and magnificence of the building, which I think remains one of the hidden architectural gems among the Southbank Centre. You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+. https://flic.kr/p/24iBuer