Grand Haven Light

Way back in March of 2010 I visited the west side of Michigan, theoretically on a lighthouse tour.  Not kidding myself, it was not a warm journey.  The temperature was very, very brisk.  The good news, I did have to 'remove' many tourists from any images.
Given the file number of the image, I was just starting with the D90.  Which also means, every shot I was taking at the time, I was learning something.  And this shot is no different.
The shot is late afternoon/early evening.  
I was walking on the concrete pier toward the light (west!).  I have many shots from this time, but since I was shooting into the sun in this one, the camera was really confused.  Back in those days, I was shooting in AUTO mode.  I'm fairly certain, even in MANUAL I couldn't have done much better.  In these situations, a three shot minimum HDR would have done the best.  Again, lesson learned.  But another lesson, when in doubt, shoot dark.  Shooting dark allows more colors to be reclaimed.
The setting sun is in direct line with the light.  Under normal circumstances, this spells disaster.  Without the help of software, this doesn't work.  I used my main three packages to get this done.
First, the particulars.  This was taken with a Tamron 18-270 lens.  I wound up trading that in shortly after the purchase for a Nikon lens.  Another story, another time.  ISO 200, f/9 and 1/500.
The original Nikon JPG looked something like this.

Dark, eh?

That was one confused camera.

Staying in the 2010 age, my primary editing packages would have been Adobe Elements and Photomatix.  And I like the grunge look.  Really grunge.

Using these two packages and my taste at the time, I came up with this.

I created multiple images, each with a different exposure using the RAW Editor.  I probably did three images.  I used Photomatix to blend the three images to one image and played with the setting until I came up with this.  This is still one of my favorite 'artistic' shots.

Fast forward to 2017.  Software updates.  Process improvements.  Taste changes.

My goal for this was to get the light color (red) to come out, keep some definition of the sky/clouds and water.  Everything else should fall into place.  And I'd like to take some of the saturation/grunge out if it.

The creation process was along the same lines as in 2010.  I created five different exposures in the RAW editor.  I combined the images in Photomatix.  Using one of the presets, I came really close to what I wanted.  I like the darker version, as opposed to dark version, but I still couldn't get the red of the light right.  I tried a new trick.  Using On One, I combined the post Photomatix image with one of the lighter images created in RAW.  I masked out the light on the darker image, allowing the lighter light to show.  I changes some of the tone settings to get a slightly warmer feel.

I like this version.  There's more time invested in this edition than in previous versions, but that's OK.  It's all a learning experience.