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I finally had some time over the weekend to take out my new lens to one of my favorite spots in Dallas: White Rock Lake. The unsets have been absolutely spectacular lately in Dallas so I was hoping to catch an explosion of color over the lake. Turns out I didn’t wait long enough for the brief explosion of color (to be honest I got hungry and went to a taco shop) but I’m still pretty happy with this one.

One of the things you need to look out for with an ultra wide-angle lens (like my new 12-24mm) is that it tends to push everything into the background of the image, so it helps to have something in the foreground to “anchor” the image.  I think the log provides at least a somewhat interesting foreground element.

So here it is, this week’s picture of the week!

For the photographers: I really needed a neutral density filter for this one, but unfortunately the 12-24mm doesn’t allow for screw-on filters because of its bulbous front element.  I tried to slow the shutter down in camera by going to f22, ISO “50”, and the shutter speed ended up being around 1.3 seconds.  This made things annoyingly difficult in post because of how dirty my sensor is (seriously probably 100 dust spots had to be removed).  Post processing, dust spots aside, wasn’t too far from my typical work flow, the only difference being two runs of Nik Color Efex Pro 4, the second being only using Tonal Contrast which I then lightly brushed in around the clouds.