Dock of the Bay

Dock of the Bay, a photo by Tony DeSantis Photography on Flickr.

I haven't been out to shoot in the past few weeks. Actually you feel like you have fallen off the face of the earth when you don't post. Heck, you feel like total rust when you don't get out to shoot at all. It really is nice to get out and just walk around looking for something to shoot, I would have been happy coming away with nothing, just being out with the water and the wind, stopping and enjoying the sight was well worth the trip.

The Shot itself:
This was taken down in Balboa, California. I parked pretty close to this area and saw this scene when I first arrived but decided to walk around for about an hour and a half looking for something to shoot and waiting for the sky to get right. Once the sun started to set I headed back to my original spot. The wind was blowing pretty heavily so I really was waiting for the sun to go down enough to get some wind swept streaking clouds. But with wind swept clouds comes many, many blurry boats. To many to process those shots. I did go with some faster shutter speeds thinking the boats were going to be to blurry.
This shot was taken at the very North end of the Balboa fun zone looking over the bay and the sunset. The rough water and sun shining on the water made for a nice composition of color and light.

The Shot:
>Standard 3 shot HDR, -2, 0, +2 with a +1 and -1 made from the OEV shot.
>F/11, 1/4-1/15-1/60 of a second, ISO 50, 24-105L @ 24mm

Post Processing:
>0EV duplicated to make -1 and +1
>All combined in Photomatix-Detail Enhancer (Exif info for settings)
>Saved as Tiff

CS-5:
>Command J-Duplicate-clone out all dust and dirt marks
>Topaz Adjust-Enhance Detail and Color
>Topaz Infocus-Global Sharpening
>Nik Color Efex Pro-Tonal Contrast-below horizon line
>Lab Color-Curves (A and B channels) Opacity 17%
>Adjustment Layer-Warm Color Filter
>Cropped (Took me forever to get a crop I liked)
>Nik Color efex Pro-Bright/Dark- Bring bright out in center and darken edges-slight vignette
>Sized and Framed for posting