For the second straight challenge, I'm entering something completely different that what I expected when the challenge was announced. This time around I figured I could find some colorful chairs, pots, or other semi-artwork here in Madison that would fit the theme well.
But then, Saturday morning happened. I was hoping to get up early enough to make it to Lake Monona to watch the sunset. Without an alarm I woke up around 5am and quickly drove over to the lake and setup to take some shots while the sun was rising. I eventually landed on this spot that gave a nice view of downtown while the sun was just starting to peak out (the bright red is a reflection of the sun). At this time the lighting changed dramatically. By bracketing some exposures I knew I could get something with decent reflections via an HDR blend.
But I wasn't expecting the colors to blend exactly in this way. The sky did have this light pink tint, but the HDR conversion helped make that the dominant color, and I knew my Pastel entry was born.
Post Processing:
* De-vignette
* Chromatic Aberration
* Combine photos in Nik HDR Efex Pro
* Increase exposure and recovery
* Topaz DeNoise
* Increase exposure and recovery further
* Increase black point
* Decrease contrast
* Increase definition
* Increase saturation with lower vibrancy
* Export as TIFF
* Resize
* Sharpen Edges
* Save as JPEG
Statistics
Place: 14 out of 160 Avg (all users): 6.4931 Avg (commenters): 7.7500 Avg (participants): 6.1613 Avg (non-participants): 6.7439 Views since voting: 1065 Views during voting: 238 Votes: 144 Comments: 6 Favorites: 0
Lovely color... I'd crop out about half the foreground to make a panoramic print and avoid cutting the photo in half with the water line at bottom of buildings. Good focus!
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