Low tide early morning

[ajm057]

I work up really early for this shot, but missed sunrise. End result worked best as a soft HDR. Thoughts?

[midnightpro]

There is nothing better than getting up early to take pictures. This when some of the best pictures are taken. I like this shot and the area where you have taken it. If you live close to this place i would try getting up earlier and shot the hell out of this location. I would if i lived there. One point i could make is you need to make sure your horizen is level. I had problems with this as well and am always working to make sure i keep it level.

[ajm057]

Thanks for the comments - I live over 2 hours drive away and was trying to get their for sunrise at 5am, but missed it by 30+ minutes. Too many speed cameras and an unexpected 1 mile walk at the end of the journey that began at 2:30 am

The camera was level on almost all my shots that morning - but for some reason I liked the idea of showing the plank at the front horizontally and was willing to sacrifice a horizontal horizon - not sure why i did this ... but it cought my eye. I have attached a "flater version" for comparison.

FYI - This was shot with a Nikon D3x, Iso 200 24-70mm F/2.8 set at 45mm and f/22 an exposed for a range of +/- 4 ev around 0.8 sec exposure. I batch processed the 9 source shots for this image from RAW to JPG with Dxo (which seem to be the best package for soughting out lense distortions), then created an HDR using photomatix pro 3, and cleaned off the bulk of the "dust" (which seems to plague me with this camera) in Capture One 5 (the quickest and easiest way I have found to remove dust spots) and then polished it and played with levels etc in PS-CS4.

I generated 119 HDRs in this trip and you can see the rest of the series at 2010 05 29 Dengie & Maldon HDR - a set on Flickr .

[Sterling]

...and was willing to sacrifice a horizontal horizon

Sorry, but that's just silly. In your first shot, the crooked horizon would be the first thing noticed by 99% of viewers and not one of them is thinking, "Oh well, at the least the piece of wood at the bottom is straight."

The straight horizon version is a million times better.