American Pride

American Pride, a photo by Tony DeSantis Photography on Flickr.

Got up 0 dark 30 this morning to get out and shoot. Overcast mornings are a crap shoot at best for shooting. LA has been my run lately but today I decided on Long Beach. Shoot wasn't going well. Overcast sky tends to lend itself to flat images. After walking around looking for some comps it just so happened that the clouds started to part. This is just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. In this shot the reflections in the water is what really caught my eye everything after that was easy.

The Shot:

>Standard 3 Shot HDR +2, 0, -2,  ISO 400, F/11, 24-105L @28mm, Tripod and Cable shutter release.

Post Processing:

>ACR

>Removed All Sharpening, Added Noise Reduction, Removed Chromatic Abberration

>Saved as Tiffs

Photomatix:

>Detail Enhancer

>Strength 100%

>Color Saturation 90%

>Smoothing (High)

>Luminosity 0.0

>White Point 1.055

>Black Point 1.055

>Microsmoothing 2.0 

>Saved as 16 Bit Tiff

Post Processing CS-5

>Topaz Adjust-Color and Detail Enhancement

>Topaz InFocus-Sharpening

>Color efex Pro 3.0

   >Pro Contrast

   >Tonal Contrast (Masked and used just for middle of shot)

   >Glamor Glow (Masked and used for sky and water only)

   >Bleach Bypass (13% Opacity)

>Adjustment Layer-Levels-increased white in boat and reflection

>Adjustment Layer-Hue/Sat-increase red in bottom of boat and sails

>Adjustment Layer-Curves-increased brightness in flags on boat

>Topaz Denoise-Sky and water only

>High pass sharpening

>Cropped, Framed and Sized for posting