11 years ago 2

A Jetty on Loch Lihnne

No-Man’s-Lands Journal Day 18 (Travel Diary Day 284)

Our flights from Chile to New York are now booked. Other than that, I have been short of adventures to write about. Planning, social events and photography have dominated most of my days!

The Cool Bits – Technical Info

Processing Time: 30 minutes
Processing method: Single Raw file
No. of Exposures: 1
EV Range: 0
Aperture: f/11
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 17mm
Lens: Canon 17-55mm f/2.8
Camera: Canon 60d
Hardware: Wacom Intuos5
Plugins: Nik Color Efex for Detail Enhancement & Topaz Denoise to control excessive noise.
Luminance Masks: N/A.
Photomatix settings: N/A.

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Today’s Photo – A Jetty on Loch Lihnne

Waiting for the stars to come out and play on Loch Lihnne, Fort William, I took a few blue hour shots. In felt there wasn’t anything to gain by combining multiple exposures. There was little contrast in the scene so the single RAW file of the 0 exposure held more than enough information to create this image.

Tip of the Day – Colour Correction using Color Balance

Being a blue hour image, this is of course seeped in blue tones. While I particularly enjoy the lighting and colour we gain from shooting during blue hour, I sometimes like to re-introduce some other colours to add depth to the photo. In this instance I simply created a Color Balance adjustment layer from the adjustment layers panel. Then, while keeping midtones selected, I slid the Yellow/Blue slider towards Yellow, ending with -10.
This brought out the greens in the hills opposite the jetty. I masked out areas where I wanted to keep the blue tones. I then created a second Color balance layer, selected Highlights and did the same, only this time adding a touch of magenta in the sky.

Looking at the before and after below, the subtle pinks in the sky and green hills add another dimension to an otherwise dominantly blue image.

Available Tutorials:

Beginner’s HDR tutorial

Digital Blending HDR Tutorial