Neal Grosskopf
High Cliff State Park Marina, WI
Before & After
Here’s another shot from my visit to High Cliff State Park two weeks ago. This shot is an earlier sequence than the previously posted picture.
Location
I took this 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
Since the sun was still above the horizon, I included it in my frame. I had to act fast as it was barely above the horizon when I arrived. I originally shot a couple sun star photos at F22 but decided to discard those from the processing stack. For this shot I used focus stacking to get the foreground sharp and then took another set of pictures to get the rest in focus. I also used bracketing with three shots with a -2ev spread. I took a total of 6 shots when you include focus stacking. I also used my 6-stop Formatt-Hitech filter to smooth out the water in the marina.
EXIF Information
Post Processing
I first ran the 2 sets of 3 bracketed shots through Photomatix. After that I brought them into Photoshop to do the focus stacking. Finally, I did all my edits in Lightroom. I copied my global Lightroom settings from a previous image file to give myself a starting point. After that, I did local adjustments using an adjustment brush. The processing of this photo when much quicker than others since I had a style set with a previous photo. I’d estimate maybe just 1 hour to do this one.
Software Used
- Lightroom
- Photomatix
- Photoshop
Techniques Used
- Focus Stacking
- High-Dynamic-Range