Neal Grosskopf
High Cliff State Park Marina, WI
Before & After
It looked like it was going to be a good sunset when I checked out sunsetwx.com so I decided to go out to High Cliff and take some pictures. I wasn’t let down when I got there! I immediately went to my favorite spot which is the marina with its long rock barriers.
Location
I took this shot at the High Cliff State Park marina which was about a 20 minutes drive from my house. High Cliff State Park is a great place to take sunset pictures as it faces West over Lake Winnebago which is about 7 miles across at this point.
Composition
After several shots from different angles, this one turned out the best with my tripod fully raised about 6 feet above the rocks. I set my camera to F11 and started firing off some bracketed shots in sets of 3. I also took a set of 3 with the foreground in focus using specific focus points on my camera so that I could blend that later in post processing.
EXIF Information
Post Processing
I ran the bracketed shots through Photomatix to even out the light and dark areas which is the starting point for my before and after photo. Next I did my focus stacking in Photoshop using the auto-blend layers tool. After that I did global changes to the image in Lightroom. Finally following up with local adjustments in Lightroom. Overall editing time I estimate to be about 3 hours.
Software Used
- Lightroom
- Photomatix
- Photoshop
Techniques Used
- Focus Stacking
- High-Dynamic-Range