The morning I took this shot of the Battery Park Pier in Apalachicola, Florida, I was expecting to have clear skies and a beautiful sunrise; instead, I got up to find heavy clouds and a thick fog had settled in overnight. I decided to forge ahead and find some nice pictures anyway.
There are several things that I think make this a good image. First, the pier has a strong graphic design. Second, the reflections of the pier lights in the foreground water lead the eye toward the pier which, in turn, provides a leading line to the pergola. Third, with the help of the heavy fog, there is nothing in either the foreground or the background that distracts from the subject. However, because it would record as a large textureless gray area, the fog itself could be distracting, so I knew I would need to take care of that in post-processing.
In Adobe Camera Raw, I adjusted the exposure, contrast, highlights, and shadows and added a little clarity. I also reduced the vibrance and saturation of the image because I felt the saturated colors actually detracted from the shape and line of the pier. I then used the Dehaze slider to eliminate some of the effects of the heavy fog. However, as I had anticipated the heavy fog appeared as a featureless, bluish-gray background that I found annoying, so additional work was needed.
To address the background, I opened the image in Photoshop, selected a replacement sky from my folder of skies I keep for just this purpose, and pasted the new sky into the picture of the pier. I made sure to select a sky containing clouds so there would be some texture to the background and was also relatively close to the picture of the pier in terms of lighting. I then experimented with the various blending modes to find the one that best merged the new sky with the pier. I used the Gradient and brush tools to eliminate the new sky from the foreground and pier. I then opened the image in Silver Efex Pro, converted the picture to black and white, made a couple of enhancements, and saved this final photograph.
Settings: Canon 5D Mk IV, 65mm, 30 sec, f/14
It’s a creative and striking work of art. 🙂 I rarely get that imaginative with post-processing. I’m typically working with either old or free photo software, too, which doesn’t help.