Lake Panorama Summer Scenes on the Main Basin

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, Tokina 28-70mm f2.8 AT-X Lense, Nikon 24-120mm f4, Nikon 70-300mm f4-f5.6, Capture NX-D, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

The main basin at Lake Panorama during a summer day makes for the ability to capture blue skies, boats, water and the lighthouse all at once. When cumulus clouds were rolling through the sky, I headed over with my camera and started capturing the scene.

I fitted the D750 with different lenses depending on the location I was at and whether I was trying to capture the flag in the image as well. When I used the Tokina lense, I put a polarizing filter on to enhance the sky and the water. Shooting in aperture priority mode, the aperture was between f7.1 and f9 while I kept the ISO at 200.

I used Capture NX-D and Lightroom CC to process the RAW files. Using NX-D, I changed the white balance to sunlight and picture control to nature-landscape. Exposure compensation was adjusted as well along with the hightlight/shadow sliders. In Lightroom, I used the contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, clarity, vibrance and dehaze sliders.

The final step used Photoshop CC to get rid of unwanted objects in the scene such has the buoy and boat docks along the jetty. To improve the color of the water, I used a cooling filter layer with a small opacity level to give it a blue tint. The brush tool was used to erase areas of the image I didn’t want the blue tint on the layer mask. 

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