A clearing storm throws some nice light on the pier
Its funny to think that this was the first time I’ve ever visited Alcatraz despite living in the area for more than a decade. As part of a team outing, finally I did visit it. The weather was perfect and on our way back, we had stopped at this pier for a some coffee. The lack of folks on this pier is what caught my attention. Usually from what I can remember, all SF piers are filled with folks and it makes it a bit harder to capture one with no people in the shot.
It was late in the evening and I had already missed the good evening light. I wasn’t carrying any tripod either, so ISO had to be bumped up. To stabilize myself and have less of a camera shake, knelt down and fired a set of 3 shots as part of a bracket.
In post, used Aurora HDR to combine the shots and then Photoshop for local adjustments. I didn’t like the amount of noise even at 1000, so Topaz DeNoise came to the rescue to clean it up. Overall I was happy the way it turned out as my expectations were much lower 🙂