How I Edited This Photo: Vari Hall at York University

I am perpetually fascinated by how photos are shot, edited and made, so I'm letting you in on my process. Today I photographed one of the most traffic-heavy areas at York University's Keele campus, which is Vari Hall. Central to almost everything on campus and with lecture halls everywhere, it connects multiple buildings and parts of campuses.

Honouring the use and applications in architectural photography, I captured multiple actions people engage in here: attending lectures, travelling, and working or studying.

Before editing, the technical specifications of the shot:

Shot on a Canon EOS R5 mirrorless,
with a 15-30mm lens,
- shot at 28mm,
ISO 100
f20/
1''6s
on a mounted tripod about 30cm from the floor
on a grey day.

The entire image was edited in Adobe Lightoom. Part by part, as numbered in the image:

Same image of above of Vari Hall but darker and unedited

I started by increasing exposure and decreasing highlights for the whole image to brighten it up (I like to shoot dark then edit for lightness as I go, but this whole image needed lightness). I also increased temperature to make it warmer (adding a yellow glow to the whole image).
For the ceiling I increased exposure, decreased highlight, added a tiny amount of texture and a about half the full value of clarity.
I used the object selection tool to choose the windows along the top and decreased highlights entirely.
For the walls I selected them through the object tool, increased by half texture as well as increasing warmth a little bit.
For the pillars and flooring I selected them with the object tool and fully increased clarity.
For all the students in the photo I highlighted them with the brush and fully decreased the texture. I didn't want the focus to be on faces so I reduced texture there (and increased it elsewhere) to direct focus.
For the York sign I increased both clarity and saturation to make it clearly pop.
For the floor I highlighted it with the brush and fully increased clarity while fully decreasing texture to smooth it out.

Vari Hall facing the lecture theatre with the help desk in front reading York U

Screenshot of Adobe Lightroom editing an image of York University Vari Hall