Day 255: Boat Drinks

Photo of the Day

Yesterday we spent the day up at Lake Freeman. I took a couple of pictures that I liked, but I really wanted a picture at night with the reflection off of the water. Who am I kidding? I wanted a killer sunset picture. A developing storm ruined that idea though so I went with the nighttime idea. I searched for a couple of locations to shoot before seeing this obvious one. This allowed me to pick up the dock with all the lights as well as get the great sky with some of the water. A boat even went through the frame to give me another point of interest. I named the post Boat Drinks for a couple of reasons. One is the obvious boat in the frame, but we also listened to a bit of the Sirius Margaritaville station going to and from the lake. I thought that it was a fitting title.

Technical Data

This picture really didn’t have a lot of post-processing done to it. Part of that is my fault. I cranked up the ISO a bit too much, and the HDR process was not having any of that. This picture was processed entirely in Photoshop. I used one of the two thirty second exposures into the program to clean it up a little. I then realized that I might be able to mask in the rest of the boat trail off of another exposure so that was done. It was a bit darker so it also allowed me to mask in some definition on the dock lights. In the end I think that less is more here, and the picture is one that I am happy with. The thirty second exposure really calmed the lake down from the choppy mess I saw into a nice peaceful looking body of water.