Yesterday was President’s Day and the Pacific Northwest was treated to one heck of a sunset.  I was lucky enough to be standing at one of my favorite places (Rizal Bridge) with the proper equipment.  What made it even more special was my almost-three-year-old son was standing right beside me.  It was a cool evening, but we were bundled up.  The colorful sky and characters walking by also distracted us from the evening chill.

 

Here’s a little info about the shot:  It’s a single exposure, edited exclusively in Adobe Lightroom.  I’m simply stunned at the dynamic range available on the Nikon D810.  I recovered shadow detail from a foreground that was literally almost completely black.  In the field, I used the camera’s highlight priority mode to maintain as much detail as possible in the brilliant sky, confident that information in the dark areas would be retained and recoverable in post processing.  I also used a 5 stop neutral density filter to prolong the overall exposure time to 60 seconds in order to blur out the traffic as much as possible.

 

I want to extend my thanks to Lucroit for sending me the special holder, adapter, and filters for the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens.  If you want to purchase anything from their website, here’s a discount code to receive 10% off: starving10.