Here’s a shot from a recent outing to High Cliff State Park during sunset. It looked like it was going to be a pretty good sunset when I looked out my window at home so I decided to make the 30 minute drive to High Cliff to take some pictures at the marina.

Location

This shot is taken at the High Cliff State Park marina on one of the giant rock barriers. I find that the southern most rock barrier has a nicer curve to it than the northern one so I take most of my photos at this location. I was also lucky that the sun set right at the tip of the barrier during this time of the year.  This is my 3rd or 4th time taking pictures at this exact location in the last couple years. Every time I go there, I try to setup in the exact same spot, but I always manage to be off by about 10 feet each time.

Composition

When I got to High Cliff I could tell it was going to be a pretty good sunset, so I was frantically running around trying to find the best position. I ended up settling for my usual spot. There was a small break in the clouds that I thought the sun would set nicely in so for about the first 20 minutes, I waited for the sun to get into position. This particular shot was one that I didn’t think I’d even use. Unfortunately, when the sun dipped below the horizon it didn’t reflect off the clouds like I wanted so this ended up being the best shot I got.

When I took it, I thought about doing a nice sunstar effect like you see in the photo. As I was taking my pictures, I tried a new technique where I put my finger over the sun to block the sunstar. I was intending to using this shot later to better define the sunstar but it didn’t quite work how I wanted and I ended up using my bracketed set of three images as they were.

The sun was at a nice position here where it was reflecting some sweet orange light off the rocks in front of me which I haven’t had happen before while shooting here.

Post Processing

I original shot bracketed shots at -2, 0 & +2 exposures. I had also shot a couple more at darker exposures with one going as far as -5. In the end I used the original 3 plus one more at -5. The -5 exposure helped with the sun as usually that is too bright. I took those 4 shots and ran them through Photomatix with pretty mild settings.

Then I took it back into Lightroom and brightened it up quite a bit. After that, I tweaked white balance, contrast, clarity, vibrance and made a lot of small tweaks using adjustment brushes.

While there’s a few things I wish I could have changed about the shot, I’m happy how it turned out and think it’s a bit different than many of my other shots and offers something unique to add to my collection of High Cliff State Park photos.

Software Used

Lightroom

Photomatix

Techniques Used

Focus Stacking

High-Dynamic-Range

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