Genesis of a Photo

[Boatman]

My photo, Rockport Sunrise, recently won mini competition #1731. The image is a little more over processed than I usually do, but the results are pleasing. I thought I'd share a bit as to how the evolved. The image was shot at sunrise, about 6:00 EDT, from a dinghy in Rockport's Sandy Bay anchorage. The camera was a Panasonic GH2 eqiupped with the 12-35mm zoom set at 19mm and f2.8. ISO was 160 and the shutter was 1/320.

The image processed well in Lr but showed potential for more drama. I re-processed it in NIK HDR FX Pro 2 (even though this is a single image) and set the HDR settings fairly low. I then worked on the image some more in Lr4, eventually coming to the image presented in the competition. It prints well, too!

RAW file from camera - no adjustments


Lr4 processed image


TIF file imported from NIK HDR FX Pro 2


TIF file from NIK further processed in Lr4

[chauncey]

Homer, I voted for that image and I appreciate the PP explanation...got a question though.
When you started playing with it...did you have a firm idea of your direction or did you try this and that?

[Boatman]

Homer, I voted for that image and I appreciate the PP explanation...got a question though.
When you started playing with it...did you have a firm idea of your direction or did you try this and that?

I knew that I needed to do two things to improve the image: brighten it a bit (especially the hulls of the boats) and add some clarity to the sky. Lr did the former well but the latter not so much. NIK's structure feature is particularly good for enhancing skies, so I tried the HDR package just to see what it would do. I liked the result and moved forward with that adding more Lr work after the HDR conversion.

A note on shadowy boat hulls: If the boat is white you can brighten the hull easily with the auto-mask adjustment brush. However, they take on a very blue tone, which can be fixed by dropping the saturation. The result is a nice shadowy hull with a whiter tone.

[John 2]

A very nice final result but I also quite like the second image. One small comment I would make is that the horizon slopes slightly. Straightening it would perfect the shot.