Photo Story: Sunset Over Estero Lagoon

After a long day of photography, I decided to do some bird photography just before sunset at the famous Estero Lagoon on Fort Myers Beach in Florida.

Sunset Over Estero Lagoon

It was a busy day photographing birds at Corkscrew Swamp and the Shady Hollow Road Rookery, and hiking and photographing at Lovers Key State Park. We decided on one more stop at the Estero Lagoon on Fort Myers Beach.

As luck would have it, there were no birds at the lagoon. Estero Lagoon was made famous by well known bird photographers for reflection photographs of the birds in the still waters of Estero Lagoon.

Well there were no birds to photograph reflections, but the sunset provided a beautiful reflection in the lagoon. The photo was taken with a rather unusual landscape lens – the Canon 100-400mm IS II Lens with the 1.4x Telephoto Extender.

After processing the photograph of the sunset over Estero Lagoon, I decided to experiment with the Topaz Impression Plug-in for Photoshop. The first photo was made using the Watercolor III preset in Topaz Impression.

Estero Lagoon Sunset Details

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
Lens: Canon 100-400mm f/4.5 – 5.6 IS II + Canon 1.4X Telephoto Extender
Focal Length: 140mm
ISO: 800
Aperture: f/16.0
Shutter Speed: 1/4000 of a second
Exposure Compensation: -2/3
Lighting: Partly Cloudy Sunset

Sunset Photo Processing

Cropped the photo and lightened the shadows in Lightroom 5.
Applied the Film Efex: Vintage filter and added a light vignette with Color Efex Pro 4.
Selectively removed noise from the photo using Topaz DeNoise.

For the first image, I used the Watercolor III preset in Topaz Impression to give the photograph a painted look.
Cleaned up the light spots in the watercolor effect using the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tool in Photoshop CC 2014.

Written by Martin Belan

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