MichaelSOwens
I'm running late.
I wanted to be on the beach before the sun came up. Our camper was in the closest site to the boardwalk and all I had to do was wake up before sunrise, grab my stuff, and head to the beach. When I saw the sun was already above the horizon I quickly decided to make the boardwalk part of the shot.
With my camera on a tripod, I had it set to shoot three exposures bracketed two stops. I used my camera's 2-Second Timer to a avoid camera movement between exposures. Back at home I processed these in Photomatix Pro using tone mapping. The Photomatix preset I used was Natural. Next, I opened it in Lightroom 4 and I used the sliders to open up the shadows, turn down the highlights, and increase the white. I also added a little bit of vibrance and straightened the horizon. For sharpening I used the Sharpen Scenic preset and then added a bit of Post Crop Vignetting.
I opened it next in Photoshop CS6 because I wanted to apply the Orton Effect. To apply the Orton Effect, I duplicated the background layer and with this background copy as the active layer, I clicked on the Image menu and chose Apply Image and changed the blend mode to Screen. Next I duplicated that layer, went to the Filter menu and chose Blur, Gaussian Blur at a level around 27. Next, I changed the blend mode of this third layer to multiply and then turned down the opacity just a little. I merged the three layers into one and I was finished.
I'm running late.
I wanted to be on the beach before the sun came up. Our camper was in the closest site to the boardwalk and all I had to do was wake up before sunrise, grab my stuff, and head to the beach. When I saw the sun was already above the horizon I quickly decided to make the boardwalk part of the shot.
With my camera on a tripod, I had it set to shoot three exposures bracketed two stops. I used my camera's 2-Second Timer to a avoid camera movement between exposures. Back at home I processed these in Photomatix Pro using tone mapping. The Photomatix preset I used was Natural. Next, I opened it in Lightroom 4 and I used the sliders to open up the shadows, turn down the highlights, and increase the white. I also added a little bit of vibrance and straightened the horizon. For sharpening I used the Sharpen Scenic preset and then added a bit of Post Crop Vignetting.
I opened it next in Photoshop CS6 because I wanted to apply the Orton Effect. To apply the Orton Effect, I duplicated the background layer and with this background copy as the active layer, I clicked on the Image menu and chose Apply Image and changed the blend mode to Screen. Next I duplicated that layer, went to the Filter menu and chose Blur, Gaussian Blur at a level around 27. Next, I changed the blend mode of this third layer to multiply and then turned down the opacity just a little. I merged the three layers into one and I was finished.