Yesterday after work I needed some "clear my mind" time to myself. I decided this before I left for work and grabbed my camera bag. Although, where I ended up taking this photo I could have easily picked it up at home after work but I didn't know where I was going to end up. I just knew that it was looking promising for a sunset. Even thought I didn't know exactly where I was going to go, as the drive progressed, this spot came to mind. So I decided to make it my destination. Now, I am usually more of a stop, shoot, and move on type of photographer but this time I decided I would set anchor and wait for the shot. Instead of moving on. This was a good plan as it allowed me to take more time and focus more on composition and nailing the shot. This was a tricky photo to take. For one I was using my 70-200 @173mm shooting 3 HDR exposures and it was quite windy. Good thing I have my trusty old boat anchor Linhoff tripod. To keep my shutters speeds down, to help eliminate blur, I up'd my ISO to 200 and dropped my aperture to f/8. This allowed the shutter speeds to be 1/500, 1/125 and 1/30. This is a perfect scene where a GND filter would have been nice to have. Not many scenes work for GNDs due to uneven horizons but this scene would have. I only had to clone out one car WAY in the distance. Another thing I like about this spot is the peace and quiet.
Details:
Taken with the Sigma 10-20 lens
Shot @ 10mm
3 Extrapolated Exposures from 1 RAW; [-2,0,+2]
Tonemapped & Boosted through Photomatix
Minor Sharpening, Crop & Curves applied through Photoshop
B&W layer applied through Photoshop
