Before & After: The Pier at Ballast Point

This is the first full edit that I have gotten the chance to do with a photo from my D800. This particular Pier is the Ballast Point Pier which is at Ballast Point Park in Tampa. Pretty cool place that I didn’t even know existed till about a week or so ago.

Really helped create a dramatic image to have the strong clouds in the background. The rest of the drama is a combination of blending modes and curves with some very detailed masking in photoshop. Each of the ‘V’ pattern slats on the side of the pier was masked into a curves adjustment to bring out the highlights. One of the things which struck me almost immediately about files from the D800 is the ease with which I can do things like masking because of my ability to zoom into the image and hold detail. Masking was an absolute breeze!

To give you some more background info about how the photo itself was taken; I used 16 stops worth of B+W neutral density filters to drop the exposure time down to 2 minutes at F8, ISO 200. The camera actually has a native ISO of 100 but old habits die hard and I defaulted to the ISO I am used to as a result of my D300s and D700. Obviously, the camera was on a tripod. I had it in Mirror up mode (first shutter click raises and locks the mirror while the second shutter click actually fires the photograph. This minimizes any shake the camera may experience as a result of the shutter moving), and used a remote trigger to raise the mirror and fire the photo.

Here’s a look at the before & after.

Any questions about the photo, how I edited it, the D800 or my long exposure process? Feel free to message me, or comment and I’ll do my best to answer.

Thanks for looking!