Evening Glow

I was heading back to the car with my pugs after a late afternoon hike in a local park. The clear sky was the brilliant blue that you often see in the late fall and winter. I noticed that the usually drab mud-brown shelter on the other side of the lake was lit up with a golden glow. I managed to squeeze off a few shots before the light faded.

Canon 40D, 24-105mm f4L IS, ISO 320, 24mm, f13 @ 1/30sec, 0 EV, pattern metering, manual exp, HH

PP: LR 2.6
20% crop
exp adjustment: set black and white point, recovered highlights, added fill
enhanced clarity and vibrance
sharpening and NR
removed dust spots
used graduated filter to darken sky
lightened the white building with adjustment brush

PS Elements: applied posterization filter, resized for the web

I like the sketched look and the reflection. I think the gradient sky is nice. Thanks for sharing your workflow!:)

Denise, thanks for looking and commenting.:)

Julie I like your comp and filters used. I think it might be stronger w/o the white house on the right and put the focus on the house with the beautiful light.

Julie, I really expected you to tell me this was an HDR - nicely done with the poster effect! Beautiful image and the gradient sky does put it over the top. Might clean up a few of the small things floating on the surface of the lake in the FG to give it that "pristeen" look. Everything else is wonderful!

Nice image and application, Julie.

I would add a little canvas to the top, if it were mine, but nice image.

Thanks, Denise, Jackie, Jules, and Mark for the helpful comments.

Denise, the light that day was amazing but I applied the filter in Elements because the image wasn't sharp enough. Jackie, I thought about taking out the white building, and I do have a vertical crop image of just the shelter. Mark, there is also more sky canvas in the original to work with. Jules, I wish this were a tripod set-up to do HDR, but I had very little time, and two dogs pulling on their leashes!:D I did clone out some white trash from the shoreline, but can always go back and get that dark debris in the water, then repost to see what everyone thinks.:)

Here is a repost with vertical crop. Just another way of looking at it.