St Joe's Light and Waves

Looking again to photos from the March 2010 Michigan west coast lighthouse tour, the first stop was in St. Joseph, Michigan.  The light is one of my favorite subjects.  They are fairly unique.  I've been there on multiple occasions.  What I can say about the area, if it is nice outside the photos will be very boring.  Consequently, the more interesting the photo, the more challenging the weather conditions.  I'll give the weather a 5 on the scale, for being windy.  (And cold...)

Spoiler alert.  This is a combination of two images.  The main shot of the water and buildings is one image and the sky is another.  Both images were taken within minutes of each other and from the same location.  The only difference was zoom.  In both shots, the particulars AUTO, ISO 200, f/13 and 1/320.  In the original image of the water and buildings, the sky was just plain flat.  Could not do a thing with it.  I found another image from the same environment with some definition in the sky.  Time to combine.

In each image, I create multiple exposure levels.  For the water and building, I created 5 images covering two full stops above and two stops below the original exposure.  For the sky I created 3 images to cover two stops above and two stops below the original exposure.  For each image, I put them through Photomatix - giving each image the same settings.  I used On One to mask the sky in the original image and combine the second image below it.

In this case it all worked.  The mask creation was simple - mostly straight lines.

I really like the water and wave colors here.  It is difficult to leave the rust colors of the building alone.  Any additional saturation borders on obscene.  I struggle with the red roof.  In reality it isn't so bright.  I tried to leave it alone and let the water carry the image.  Just didn't work for me.  So there is just a little pop there.