Pier Lights – Three Ways | MLCreations Photography

Riverside Park, Indialantic, FL

I mentioned in a previous post that my daughter and I went out before sunrise on our last day in Florida. She had wanted to go to the beach and I, of course, wanted more pictures. Our first stop was at Riverside Park. I love going to this park, especially around sunrise or sunset time. The park has a great pier jutting out into the Indian River. I can see the 192 Causeway into Melbourne. And there are a lot of places for me to setup my tripod. 🙂

This particular image I was trying to use the lights along the causeway to mimic the outline of the pier. It also has quite a few of the elements I enjoy photographing. It was before sunrise so I would need a long exposure (20 seconds). There are light reflections as well as a silhouette of the pier. I can easily say this is one of my go to places whenever I am in the Melbourne/Palm Bay area.

My indecision comes in with the processing I wanted to apply to this image. I like the color image. I have the contrasting yellow lights with the blue tinted water and sky. There are a few other splashes of color from various light reflections. And there is a soft blending of the magentas with the blues and yellows in the sky and water. While processing this image there is a step where I adjust the sharpness which is done in B&W. The program automatically switches to allow me to see the detail better. I thought that image looked nice as well.

So I applied my normal B&W processing using Topaz Lab’s B&W Effects. This is the second image which I used a cool tone treatment. And I guess I was in an exploring mood I also processed the image using Nik Collections Silver Efex Pro. I was going to a bluer look for the image and this software had better options for me. This would be the third image.

I like them all. I know I am suppose to have a clear idea in my head of the image I want to make but sometimes playing with an image is fun too. Experimentation is what keeps me interested. I want to see what other types of images I can create. I want to push myself into different areas. Granted, I didn’t push to far, but I played and I learned.