Day 166 - Ferry dock at sunset

I was determined to go out and do some photography today as it was sunny, bright and beautiful after a long, long time.  I thought I'd almost forgotten what the sun looked like!  I had wanted to do some bird photography, but after doing the shopping for the month and with the exhaustion I have been feeling, I pretty much didn't feel like getting out early enough to find birds.

So, I checked on the sunset times and went out with about 45 minutes in hand to get to the place where this hidden ferry dock is.  I have posted some pictures of that earlier in my blog, and honestly, I didn't really experiment with a new perspective this time, as I wanted to try out HDR, as it has been my latest fun thing to do ( I actually try to learn something new and practise a few times so I don't forget it in a hurry).

However, I didn't bring my tripod with me because this place is a very long walk from home, and I would be slowed down with the added weight.  But I knew I could rest my camera on the railings there.  But believe it or not, it was so windy, it was actually moving the camera around when I rested it on the railing.  Fortunately, I was able to do some quick shooting when the winds went down a little bit.

The shot was created from the 5 bracketed shots below:

 

Here's the final HDR image that I created using CS5.  I added a little bit of saturation, and sharpness as I found that it looked a little washed out.  Also, the original HDR image was too grainy, so I removed some noise in it and added back a little shadow to make it look more realistic.  Afterwards, I added a border and voilà!