It was almost perfect shooting conditions on the day I took the featured photo. It was early evening and the light was already soft, but the thick white clouds made it even softer, acting as a huge natural diffuser. I took 3 bracketed shots (-1, 0, +1) on a tripod.
The soft diffused light made the processing of this photo easy and straightforward. I did not have to use HDR workflow because the light was not too dynamic and the single RAW processing was sufficient to recover the highlights and the shadows.
I used Lightroom Preset based workflow. I applied Natural preset from my Landscape Preset Collection and adjusted Exposure using ToolKit adjustments.
In the final step, I did some cleaning and color correction in Photoshop.
Loc: 36.956793, -111.488646
Deconstructing Featured Photo
Camera: Sony a6000
Lens: Sony 16-70mm
Focal Length: 19mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: F8
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442
Processing: Lightroom Preset Based Workflow
Lightroom: import, tagging, preset based processing (Natural preset from Landscape Collection)
Photoshop: contrast, color correction, cleaning, noise reduction, sharpness.
Photoshop Plugins:
- Topaz DeNoise was used to reduce digital noise (sky, water).
- Topaz Clarity was used to enhance details and boost colors.
