Blue Hour On The Water

Posted on August 25, 2011 | 12 comments

As the sun was setting Tuesday evening, the clouds began to spread across the sky in thin wisps radiating from the horizon so I threw my gear in the car and headed for the water to capture some long exposures. All of the way to the spot I had in mind I watched the skies hoping that the wind patterns would hold until I could get setup. Sadly, the wind died almost completely and the cloud formations changed dramatically before I made it.

All was not lost though because the display of colors that came just after the sun sank below the horizon completely made up for the loss of my clouds. The background of the sky remained a deep blue while the clouds began to glow a brilliant orange and yellow. I shot a few single image long exposures and fired off several sets of brackets before the colors faded and it started to get dark.

When I uploaded the RAW files, I started working with the brackets just to see how they were going to look. Before I knew it, I had completely processed this image and thought I’d share with you today.

Camera settings: Canon 60D, Canon EF-S 18-135mm Lens, 35mm, ISO100, f/16, 3-brackets, CPL, ND4

Processing: Adobe Lightroom 3, Photomatix Pro, Adobe Photoshop CS5, Topaz Adjust, OnOne PhotoTools 2.6