With the recent warm temperatures a few weeks ago, I thought it was about time to head over to High Cliff State Park during sunset and take a few pictures of my favorite rock barrier. According to my Lightroom collections this is my 10th visit to High Cliff in a couple years to shoot a sunset. I wasn’t expecting anything amazing as sunrise and sunset tend to be pretty boring during Wisconsin winters since it’s overcast just about every day. I waited for a day where it was at least partly cloudy vs. 100% cloudy. My favorite thing about taking pictures during sunset is I don’t have to wake up at 4am and gamble driving an hour only to get a lousy sunrise.

Location

This is my first shot of the season at High Cliff State Park. It’s a short 20 minute drive from my house and a favorite sunset location of mine. High Cliff is a pretty big place with a bunch of different places to take pictures. Over the years I’ve sort of gravitated to this particular spot as one of my favorite locations.

One problem with taking pictures somewhere with a tripod and bigger sized camera, is you attract other people to the same location. I’ve noticed this on several occasions. I think people just assume you know what you’re doing so they go to the same place and also take a picture. While standing here, it was a constant flow of kids in shorts and t-shirts (it was 40 degrees out) walking over attempting to walk over the icy rocks. One girl even decided to just wear her socks and no shoes while walking all the way to the end of the barrier.

I had noticed some other people walk right across from left to right over the ice which seemed a bit crazy to me. Another group of kids joked about walking on the ice as well and I told them I saw some other people do it so it must be fine. They didn’t trust/believe me and thought I was setting them up to fall in.  Throughout the shoot kids walked in front of me on the rock barrier. I just kept shooting thinking I could maybe take different shots and blend them together to hide the kids as they stood there in the way.

Composition

For my composition, I actually got out my phone and attempted to re-create the same shot I took last summer. I couldn’t quite get it exact but I got pretty close with this shot. Since there was no water flowing, I could leave my ND filters in their bag for this which was nice as those usually take some time to setup and I almost always drop one in the dirt and then spend the rest of the time thinking about how each one cost about $150, lol.

Post Processing

I created this shot a little different than I normally would. I ended up creating it 2 times before settling on the last version, each time copying the settings over from the previous shots. I was ‘smart’ enough in the field to not move my tripod from one shot to the next. Because of this, I had a bunch of different skies to choose from. I also remembered to check my histogram while shooting so I realized that I had some clipped highlights. Because of this, I set my exposure spread to -6, -3, 0, +3, +6. This let me avoid clipping the sky which was really bright.

The first two times I ran it through Photomatix, I ended up with clipped highlights still until the last time when I used that -6 exposure. This finally kept the sky un-clipped and also brought in a lot of that orange color.

After processing the photos in Photomatix, I did my usual routine. Adjusting white balance to lean more purple & yellow. Adding a ton of adjustment layers and tweaking individual areas. I wanted the sky and rock barrier to stand out the most so I focused most of my attention there while leaving the ice largely unaffected. Overall, I’m happy with it for a winter shot. I know I’ll get some really great ones as the weather warms up and the overcast becomes less frequent.

Software Used

Lightroom

Photomatix

Techniques Used

High-Dynamic-Range

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