Cedar Key Clearing Storm (View Larger)

Leo, really like this capture. Very calm photograph with some beautiful tonal ranges. Well Done Amigo...Lefty

Cedar Key use to be a small fishing village on the west coast of

central Florida that I use to visit when I was at the University of

Florida. Today though it still has it's charm it is a highly

commercialized area. I arrived one late afternoon in December of 2006

as a storm was clearing out and photographed this old pier. In the

color conversion it was necessary to to make some severe adjustments

to maintain some separation in the sky. These severe adjustments

always produces both artifacts and grain which made the sky look quite

coarse. To solve this problem I made two virtual copies in Lightroom

and processed one normally and the other with the clarity slider set

at about -40. I placed both in CS4 on different layers and blended

them together with a mask. In fact the whole image except for the pier

is the soften clarity image. When I did my sharpening it was applied

only to the pier. As a final touch I added selenium toning.There is a

second version of this in my New Additions folder in which the clarity

filter was not used. Which do you perfer?

Original color RAW file.

Like the lines, contrast, lighting and tones.... Well Composed... A Very Serene and Beautiful Image!!! Well Done!

I simply like what you did with the photo. All in all, of great importance is what's in the photographer's head.

I clicked back and forth on both images, and decided this was my favorite. This one is softer and has a tranquility feeling to it. Very nicely done! Thank you sharing all the details of your post processing. A lot of work was put into this, and the end result is fabulous.

 

Debra

Leo, it has taken me a while to decide, but after reading your recipe, I think this one tastes better. Problem is, when viewing on the web, it is difficult to see some of the nuances. I think the obvious difference is this one has less contrast and displays softer. Really nice work as usual!

PDE

You've done a remarkable transformation of this image. I hate to be the contrarian here, but I prefer the other version. Unless the subject matter is something that particularly lends itself to softness (flowers, fog, mist, etc.), I find that I generally prefer sharper images. I looked at the larger version and then I stood way back from the monitor in trying to decide. The sharper version won for me. Thanks for the play by play on this!

Ray, Vladut, Ray, Glenn and Pierre- I do appreciate you stopping by and leaving some encouraging words. Thanks

Your "this tastes better" made me smile. Thanks for your input Mark.

First of all thanks for taking the time to comment. It all just a matter of taste and what the photographer wants to portray and In my experimentation of this negative I found the soft version appealed to me because it did have that foggy effect. The problem here is that in my effort to help educate I have shown you all facets of the image making. If I had just presented the image, the general consensus would have been that this was taken on a foggy day. My only hope is that other PNers learn and appreciate my revealing recipe.