Bognor Beach Gale Force Final

I have had a BW 10 stop Neutral Density filter for 8 months but have previously used it only at Sunset. This was my first try with it in daylight.

Last Saturday my Club, Bognor Regis Camera Club had a practical workshop on Bognor Regis Beach, West Sussex, UK. The only problem with the weather was a 40 mph gale force SW wind straight off the Atlantic and English Channel. This though provided some clouds scudding across the sky at a fair speed. A shutter speed of 25 seconds was able to create a good sky effect. To get the shutter speed I used ISO 100 and f22

The picture was taken on a Tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10 mm. I created a false HDR from the original RAW file with Plus and Minus 2EV images created.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion method Surreal 2 preset.

Photoshop

Topaz adjust was used with vibrant presets group with detail 1preset applied with a brush on a layer only to the shingle and rope in the foreground to add more detail there.

General adjustments in levels to enhance with a layer mask used to exclude highlights in the sky.

Brightness adjustment layer used with a layer mask to brighten only the lettering on the boat to bring this up.

Saturation blues used to bring down blues in the sky for a more natural look.

Layers flattened before going on to noise reduction with Noiseware Pro Plugin and a little sharpening.

One of the points taught in the workshop was to use a low aperture number to get a narrow depth of field to focus attention on the boat not the pier. With a 10mm lens and f22 for a low shutter speed this was not possible with this image. I got round this by applying Gaussian Blur on a duplicate layer with a layer mask. This effect was then applied with a brush only to the pier and the more distant boat and shingle

The CS5 content aware healing brush was used to remove sensor dust marks.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Bognor Beach Gale Force Original

Tonemapped image

Bognor Beach Gale Force Tonemapped

Final Image

Bognor Beach Gale Force Final

For licences see Bognor Beach Gale Force

Edwin Jones