Like most of my sunrise shots, I took this one on a Saturday when I was able to wake up early and not need to go to work later. I got up at 3am for this shot and drove about 1.5 hours to the small town of Algoma.

Location

Algoma is located on Lake Michigan, one of the largest fresh water lakes in the world. It faces East which makes it great to take sunrise pictures. Its harbor also offers several piers to get different angles. The harbor has a lighthouse which makes a great background subject for photos.

Composition

I set my tripod low to the concrete pier and aimed it at a large pipe to give the image some foreground interest. I tried to angle the pier a bit towards the lighthouse to give it some leading lines. There were two small clouds in the sky in this direction so I tried to quick take some shots to get them included.

Post Processing

This photo took quite a long time to edit, I’d estimate 5 hours. It’s a composite of 9 different photos. 2 sets of 3 brackets photos were used for the sky, lighthouse & pier. Another set of 3 were taken for the water. The longest of these shots was 180 seconds. I then ran the 3 sets of 3 through Photomatix to even out the tones. After that I used Photoshop to focus stack them. Finally I blended the longer exposure shot in over the water.

Software Used

Lightroom

Photomatix

Photoshop

Techniques Used

Focus Stacking

High-Dynamic-Range

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