I love Grand Manan Island for its unique location and beauty. Even in such a beautiful location, however, facing an empty sky on a humid, summer day can make it challenging to find an interesting subject to photograph even during sunset.
When I am out of ideas on Grand Manan and signature seascapes begin to look ordinary, I drive to Flagg Cove and walk along the Fisherman Wharf hunting for water reflections
Here is the result of my solution for countering “bad photography weather.”
Shooting
- Camera: Sony a6000
- Lens: Sony 16-70
- Focal Length: 42mm
- Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority (A)
- ISO: 100
- Aperture: F8
- Shutter Speed: 1/320s
- Bracketing: 3 (-1, 0, 1)
- Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442
- ReviewBallhead: FEISOL CB-40D
Processing
First, I change the aspect ratio from 3 x 2 to 16 x 9 using the Crop Overlay tool in Lightroom. The goal was to minimize the impact of a boring, cloudless sky.
From that point, it was a straight forward Lightroom Rapid Editing. I applied Shark Cove style preset from Landscape Collection, and later I used adjustment presets from TOOLKIT to tweak the image.
Lightroom Editing Formula: Shark Cove (9, 13, 17, 32)
At the very end, I jumped to Photoshop and used Topaz plugins DeNoise and Detail to boost the local contrast and to reduce digital noise.
Before & After Transformation
