[slr_neophyte]

This has happened to me a few times lately, and I'm really not sure how to correct or compensate for this problem. During some night photography scenarios, there are extremely bright lights in front of the subject I'm attempting to photograph. Unfortunately in some of these situations, there is not an alternate location, angle, or position in which to photograph from where I may AVOID these bright lights altogether.

Needless to say, even though I'm shooting in RAW, and using Lightroom (highlights and whites cranked all the way down to -100 in many of the photos), these bright lights at the foreground of my image, are still extremely overexposed, or burned out, or causing flare (maybe due to my UV filter - which I probably should have removed in some cases).

I'll attach some samples for reference (one with an overexposed sun in my opinion) - please give me all the advice you can! I want to beat this!

[slr_neophyte]

What version of LR do you have? If it's one of the CC versions, you can do bracketed exposures and merge as an HDR to recover the blown highlights. If you want it to retain a more natural look like in these photos, then turn off auto town when you do the merge.

The sun is always going to be tricky, since it is so much brighter than most point sources. A well-defined disc like you have is a pretty good result.

I'm using Lightroom 6.1. So, shooting an HDR style image with multiple exposures is the only solution?

[TonyW]

The main thing is that the light sources cannot be tamed as they are far too bright and in many cases could be considered effectively as specular highlights i.e. without detail. You are not going to tame this with HDR or post processing - other than getting a featureless darker tone

IMO the city lights scenes always look better when shot at the time when the light is fading and the street and building lights have not been on long.

Look at these lovely images from forum member mikeSF
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeoria/8198876612/

Look up shooting in the Blue and Golden hours

[Murfy]

I actually don't think you could get much better with that sun exposure, that seems pretty defined to me.

For the street lights, you could meter for the light, but then like someone mentioned, it would underexpose the rest and you have to boost in post. Or figure a meter reading that is in between the metered street light and the surrounding image by using the spot meter setting. You will still be underexposed, but not as badly. You will have some increased in noise but the lights won't be as blown out. (but I don't think your street lights are that bad either) Merging the bracketed images is the other solution.

[TonyW]

If you want to get rid of the starburst effect around the streetlights you may want to experiment with opening the aperture up, as in these shots
https://www.slrlounge.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/starburst_night.jpg

I think that the submitted street light images may have been played with in post to try and minimize the overexposed look and have done nothing IMO to improve the image. Hope you don't mind but what about a simple curve adjustment using the street lights for white balance as in a copy of your image - wait a few seconds for the image to change from original to curve version

[Na Horuk]

these bright lights at the foreground of my image, are still extremely overexposed, or burned out, or causing flare (maybe due to my UV filter - which I probably should have removed in some cases).

Mount a good, tight lens hood, particularly with wide angle photos, but for telephoto as well. Replace UV filter with a multicoated polarizing filter, or no filter at all.
In LR, you can add a gradient and then lower the contrast and brightness of just the bottom part of the image. Or you can use a brush and paint only the lightbulbs that you want, and decrease their contrast, brightness, exposure, and add saturation.

I actually don't think you could get much better with that sun exposure, that seems pretty defined to me.

Yep. There is only so much you can do. Street lights, sun, moon, will often (ie, just about always) look overexposed. Only thing you can do about this is exposure bracketing and then HDR, but this can make things look very, very unnatural. The sun being blown out is kind of something you should expect. I mean, you can't even look at it with the naked eye. How would a lit lightbulb look when it is darkened? The city would look like a dystopian painting

I think the sample photos attached in the OP are not bad at all.

[paulh]

I think the sample photos attached in the OP are not bad at all.

Agree - they look pretty decent, imo.

[quh86]

I dont think there is any other way than hdr or focus stacking to avoid blown out highlights or starbursts respectively.
What you should pay attention to however is, if you underexpose the "whites" drastically in your image they will end up looking unnatural, they will be getting a slight color-cast, very different from clean white you normally would expect in such a picture.

[Na Horuk]

The only time I would really work hard to remove bright lights in a city is when it is something really annoying, like a gas station sign or a fast food sign, with really bright lights and annoying pictures. In that case, I just apply a selective brush to desaturate, lower contrast, lower sharpness and clarity. But it can still look odd. Its just something we have to accept as part of modern cities. If you want to see nice architecture and cities without any signs and bothersome lights, you will have to go to North Korea lol
Looking at the OP photos again, I would just recommend you enable lens profile CA correction and purple fringing correction. Beyond that, its good.