The Story
January 2011. After a lousy 2010 in what photo trips concerned, I decided that 2011 would be a return to normality. Nothing better than an one week holiday to get the year started. I had discovered a promising spot in the Seixal Bay, called Ponta dos Corvos. This spot had an abandoned factory and an abandoned shipyard that I decided to explore that day. I packed the gear and, after a quick lunch, I went there. It was an overcast day and when I approached Ponta dos Corvos I soon discovered that the road there was a perfect adventure: more holes than road and all of them filled with water. If I only had an 4x4 :) That, the almost raining weather and the insecurity of the spot cut my trip short.
Still it was very early in the afternoon and I couldn't throw that sky away that easily. After a short thinking, I decided to head to Cacilhas and try some long exposures in broad daylight.
I parked in the Cais do Ginjal and started to re-explore the place. After some photos, I decided to try this one. I mounted the tripod and the ND filter and gave it a try. I took half a dozen shots and the afternoon was already over - that's something typical when I do long exposures.
Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 3.0 filter
60/1 second
F/9.0
13 mm
100
Original Photo
Post Processing
This photo was my first choice from that day. I imported it into Lightroom, removed some dust spots and then applied the automatic Lens Correction for the Sigma 10-20 lens. Then I slightly increased the Exposure, the Black Clipping and duplicated the Contrast. As the river was too dark, I applied an inverted Graduated Filter to the bottom and the reduced the Exposure again. Pushed the Contrast even upper, increased the Clarity to 60 and Converted to Black And White. There I increased the Blue Gray Level - at the moment, my idea was to apply a similar treatment to the one used in 233 seconds. But then I decided to try to decrease the Exposure a lot to have the opposite effect - a very dark look, instead of the brighter one in the other photo - I preferred the way the photo looked that way . I increased the Sharpening and the Black Clipping and then re-adjusted the Brightness - it was too dark. As the vignetting created by the filter holder started to show in the upper left corner, I Cropped it out. The I added another Graduated Filter, this time to darken the sky a little, made small adjustments to the Exposure and Brightness and applied my custom Split Tone preset.
It was ready. I published the photo to the usual sites and after some critiques that mentioned lack of contrast and that the photo was too dark, I decided to fix that issues. I changed the Point Curve to Strong Contrast and increased the Exposure a little.
Final Photo
Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/60-Seconds-192438666
