December 3, 2008

Jekyll Island at Sunrise


This is another image from Jekyll Island.   Like the image I posted on December 1st, this scene had a very large dynamic range and like that image, I combined three shots to make the final image—one photo for the sky, one photo for the beach and ocean and one photo for the tree.  Last night at a meeting of Bay Area Photo Club, Barry asked me why I did not use HDR to combine the photographs.  I did but did not like the results, so I opted for combining the photos in Photoshop manually.  This gives me a little more control over how the final image appears.   I wanted both the tree and the rising sun (and its reflective color on the water) to have as much detail as possible.   Rather than trying to create the mood of the first image from Jekyll Island, I wanted to make sure that the details of the certain parts of the image came forward.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, 17-35 f/2.8 at 17mm, shot at ISO 200, f/16 and 1/250, 1/60 and 1/8 of a second, white balance at 8,400K (wanted a warm glow to the image).

Post Processing: 

Lightroom—set white and black point, and added mid-tone contrast and clarity.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast filter (which varies contrast for highlight, mid-tones and shadow areas separately) on first the tree and then on the ocean to increase the contrast in both areas; and then I applied the Skylight filter to add a little more glow to the overall scene.

 

6 comments:

  1. Very different from your first one. As always, I like the moody ones better. The different textures in the image and the lighting is what makes this one interesting to me.
    Professor

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  2. Hello Patrick!

    This is another great shot with great post-processing!

    Well done!

    Cheers!
    Barry

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  3. Again, you have given me an photo that I think I would enjoy looking at for a long time. Nice colors and composition. You may have turned me onto nik Color Efex. It seems like you use them a lot. I like their look.
    Anne

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  4. I think this is a very good capture. The composition, colors and lighting draw you into the image. Good job.
    Peter

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  5. I like how you finished this one. On a large print, I think one would spend considerable time looking at all the details. Good work.
    Jeff

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  6. I like this one.I like the details in the tree.It makes it look very real.Also, nice lighting and color.Good job.
    Taylor

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