Tag: Florida Sunset

Watching The Setting Sun

It seems the trend has been me doing sunset photos on a Friday. That is the assumption that there is a weekend approaching. Sadly I am in Chicago and I am doing a 9 day straight without a break on an extended project. On the bright side once that is done I’m off to my happy place, Thailand!

I am going to guess that the pier with the cover on it is for viewing the Caloosahatchee River. There were lots of people coming and going to watch the sun set. Lots of selfies being taken and lots of cell phones taking pictures. For my purposes it was reflecting the sunset nicely and worked to balance things out.

To be honest, I have no idea what I did to get the look. I think it’s plain now that what you see isn’t what I photographed. It’s there as I don’t fundamentally alter the image. What you see was basically what was before me. The finished product is just me going I like this here and that there. How it turns out is what I want it to be.

Enjoy.

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Framed Sunset

It’s Friday and the sun is setting on the week and the weekend begins. It’s why I saved this one until today.

This was shot while I was in Fort Myers, Florida near the river walk area that follows the Caloosahatchee River. The wood is for mooring boats but I have never seen one tied up there except in the marinas. Still, they worked great for framing the photo.

This image was not shot for HDR, I find I have better success with images by using one photo and then running it through Aurora HDR then masking it bits here or there. I know I ran a few filters through it to get the effects I wanted between the sky and the water. Then, as what seems to be the norm remove noise from the sky using Noiseless Pro because of the blue channel.

Enjoy.

Sunset on Caloosahatchee River

Red Sky At Night

This is another one from Fort Myers. You can see the sunsets are rather spectacular there provided you don’t mind dealing with the heat and humidity. The heat and humidity are the reasons I have so many sunset and night shots because it was too hot to move during the day and it would either fry you or your camera first because it’s so hot. I had heat spots on the sensor from the one day I shot during the day.

When I edited this it was all about the sun and the colors in the sky. So I brought it into Aurora HDR and selected some preset. I tend to go for an overall look and not really worry about over saturation or whatever. I’m going to mask it in and change the opacity anyways depending on what I want. So once I had that back to Photoshop to mask in the various bits. Once happy, smack sharpen and hit save.

Enjoy.

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Piering Into the View

This is another one from Fort Myers, Florida and shot on the Caloosahatchee River. People seem to like the photos of the sunsets so I went with another. I really wanted to do a few more series this week but my schedule just hasn’t allowed me to to sit and edit for the extended amount of time that a couple of them will required. So sunsets it is!

The usual layering and masking applies when I do a landscape shot like this. I really like just masking in bits of HDR stuff without making it overblown. I like doing HDR stuff but sometimes it can be a bit too much so if you take the subtle route you can get what you want to enhance a photo instead of distract. So once I was happy with all the various layer masks, HDR and non-HDR I said done and was happy!

Enjoy.

Piering Into the View

Reflecting On The View

This is another one of those Fort Myers, Florida sunsets that I captured (I got a lot of them). I was on the River Walk and I saw the puddle left over from the frequent storms and saw the reflection along with everyone sitting there and enjoying the sunset so I figured why not take a picture. Think it worked out.

Editing wise I didn’t go over on the filters and masks I applied to the image. Once I had the base done in Lightroom it was time to move to Photoshop. I applied the curves adjustment and started to dodge and burn to my liking. Of course, with the new upgrade to Photoshop I didn’t have any of my filters so it was save the file, then copy my filters then open it back up. Once I had filters again I did apply a slight HDR effect to the sidewalk area and masked that in. Then I worked on the sky to bring it out a bit more. Then it was a hue/saturation mask to give it some color and warmth.

Enjoy!

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Something Missing At Sunset

This is a pier looking thing on the Caloosahatchee River near a restaurant. I wanted to get closer to it but there were warning tape on the walkway and an angry looking guy smoking a cigarette guarding the path. So I set up as near as possible without violating the same. I have no idea what happened to the pier thing but it’s clearly missing some parts and is loaded with warning tape.

While the structure serves as a visual anchor in the image it’s all about the colors in the sky and water. As usual I may have enhanced everything a wee bit! The water got one mask applied and the sky another. I really wanted the texture in the clouds and water to come out. Since Florida is always “hot” I have been applying a warmer hue/saturation adjustment to the photos to give it that feel.

Enjoy.

Something Missing At Sunset

Bridge Over Route 41

The Route 41 Bridge! Well at least its the name I’ll give it. It might have a different name but I have no earthly idea. This is the non-toll, non-business route bridge over the Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers.

I was bored of Thailand and I didn’t want to start to inflict architectural images on everyone yet (plus I’m being lazy on the series stuff) so I went back to the stuff I shot but didn’t know how to edit pool. This is a HDR image but its subtle and when I first started to do HDR I had no idea what the hell I was doing other than winging it. Now that I have been editing them since April of 2015 I have a bit more of a grasp of what to do. When I attempted before 7 images shot with 2/3 stops would turn into a nightmare of noise that I had no idea how to fix. Now, its just create a layer do what I want then mask it in. Takes a bit of time but the results are worth it.

Enjoy!

Bridge Over Route 41