Last week, I shared a recent favorite image of the sunset as seen from Chandler Hovey Park

[LINK].  When I first arrived at the park, I actually ran past the lighthouse and to the edge of the land drawn by the incredible colors you see here.  I took 4 photos at this spot before walking back toward my car in search of the more expansive view that I ended up favoring.

For this image, I was drawn not just to the vibrant colors of the setting sun but also to the boats anchored in Marblehead Harbor.  The sun not only colored the sky overhead but that light spilled out onto the waters below and I sought to capture both by shooting in portrait orientation.

How this image was created:

At the time of capture, I used exposure bracketing to take images at -1/0/+1 EV.  Shooting into such a bright light can play havoc on the metering of cameras and I sought to give myself the cushion of a mistake by exposing for all possible errors made by the camera.  It turned out that the camera did an incredible job and this image came from the 0 EV exposure.  In Lightroom, I toned down the highlights just a bit but not enough to push the sun into a fake looking yellowish orb.  I pushed up the shadows as well to bring detail to the houses in the distance and to the boats in Marblehead harbor.  With that done, it was time for some work in Photoshop where I used luminosity masks to bring out contrast to the boats and ocean as well as the clouds above again without affecting the great light and colors of sunset.  I thought about removing the unused buoys but decided that they added a necessary element to the image and left them in.