Change of Plans

Whenever I’m out of town, I battle with the notion of getting up early and catching the golden hour. It was no different on this weekender up to my hometown of Seattle. It was a gorgeous weekend—which is rare at the end of March—so my inner talk finally nudged me enough to roll out of bed and slip quietly out of my sister’s house with my gear in tow.

My original destination was Kerry Park, which sits on the south slope of Queen Anne Hill. Upon my arrival, I saw that I was not the only one with this idea. There were already a dozen other photographers with their tripods and cameras already set up. After spending about 45 minutes there, I realized that I just wasn’t going to get an exciting shot. There were no clouds in the sky. The light from the sunrise was not coming in at an angle that hit the Space Needle in the way that I envisioned it would. So, it made no matter that I knew where I wanted to shoot nor that I actually got up early to shoot…the time of day and season just weren’t right for that location.

At that point, I knew I had about an hour before Douglas woke up. So, I considered where else I could go. The wheels started turning as I studied how the daylight was forming. I needed to get “in front” of Queen Anne Hill, a.k.a. to the east of it and Gasworks Park came to mind. When I got there, the sun was lighting up day magnificently. Since I love vivid and saturated colors in my images, this was quickly becoming my heaven.

From getting the awesome and fun opportunity to work with Brian Matiash for more than a year, I followed his M.O. and created a four exposure tone-mapped #HDR image using Photomatix Pro.

Stylization was done in Perfect Effects 4 as part of Perfect Photo Suite 7 by onOne Software. Since I love sharp detail in my images, I used used the effects HDR Look Natural and Amazing Detail on the hillside and the boats. Then I used the Brush Skin Smoother to get some of the ripple out of the water. And I applied Golden Hour Enhancer and Split Blue-Yellow effects on the buildings and the reflection to make sure you knew that I loved the sun that morning. Though I loved the clear sky, I thought the image needed some depth, so I blended the Rice Paper texture over the image and added the Soft Vignette. I then used the Clone Stamp in the Perfect Layers module to remove the remnant of the kayaker that came about because of the multiple exposures I combined.