Indigo Sunset

Today's picture was taken from my office at sunset. It was a foggy morning that day so I had taken my camera to work, because I would love to get a shot of skyscrapers sticking out of the fog. Well, the skies cleared just before I reached the office so I turned to taking pictures of the sunset instead.

I recently purchased a set of Graduated Neutral Density (GND) filters from Lee Filters, specifically designed for use with my Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 wideangle lens. I look forward to using these in landscape photography, but also want to test their limits in architectural photography. I used a 0.6 GND filter in this pic and I think it worked out well.

If you have questions or would like to hear more details about GND filters and how they work please feel free to drop me a comment.


Here's the photo:

14mm, f13, 8s, ISO 400, Lee 0.6 GND filter

I only now realise I was using ISO 400. Whooops.... should have been ISO 200, of course.

Post-processing included the following steps:

Lightroom

• Temperature: 4200K
• Tint: +7
• Exposure: 0.00
• Recovery: 0
• Fill Lights: 20
• Blacks: 7
• Brightness: +50
• Contrast: +25
• Clarity: +20
• Vibrance: +10
• Saturation: 0
• Export to Photoshop

Photoshop

• Apply Lens Correction Filter: Custom --> Vertical Perspective +2
• Apply Spot Healing Brush
• Apply Smart-Sharpen Filter: Amount 40%, Radius 1.3px
• Save as TIF

CaptureNX2

• Apply U-Points: Slightly increase the saturation of bronze glow on medium left tower and of green lights at the base of central tower
• Convert to sRGB with perception based rendering intent
• Save as JPG

Photoshop

• Insert watermark
• Save as JPG

Cheers,
Sebastian