The sky and reflection really make a wow picture out of it. Good one out of the box Chris.

It does look like HDR, very nice composition, and I love the reflections, and the bobber is an added element even though it's a leftover from a fisherman. tigs=^..^=

Wow Breath taking capture and posting - right into my favs my friend

i suppose in a way it does look HDR, clouds are too flat. I tried one with 3 different exposure blended...Yuck! lightroom? Yuck! did pick up some of the trees and shore line with a few presets i made, grass in the water was green...again Yuck! too grainy. so i use the middle exposure to play. it was -2/3stop.

point here: exposure is everything, best to have 3 different exposure to maybe blend, or three to pick from, instead of just one that looks great on your LCD screen only to get back to the computer to be disappointed. thats why I am always on brackets 90% of the time, Tigs.

A lot of cameras have a setting by which you can take three separate photos every time of the same scene, and you can preset the number of stops up and down you want the second and third exposure to be (of course for night bulb shots there's no point).

Unless it covers huge areas of a photo, I don't have a problem with a little flat or bright spots, particularly in clouds, because that's generally how our eyes see these kind of scenes. To me, the clouds in your photo are very calming and natural. At the time of day you caught this, it looks exactly as how I would expect to see it, outside a viewfinder. And when I see it at any size, the near-perfect mirroring makes the view appear as though it was underlaid with the tip of a crystalline arrowhead. It's very cool (and I have to say it, Chris, this would have made an outstanding contest entry... but I shouldn't be a kettle in the black pot scenario; I don't enter them either).

I also like those hidden little spots in photos--that bobber--a wee bit of photographic "Where's Waldo". [oD

-Nik

Exactly! Nik...lol i do enjoy you comments and there's usually a chuckle waiting for me :) yes, even my wife's cheap point-and -shoot has the feature of bracketing. getting her to use it correctly is another story! personally I don't see the point for more then 3 exposures for HDR but some camera even have 5,7,9 too many for me to worry about or to blend. if you set 3 up properly it sufficient for good HDR shots. in this one it just wasn't happening correctly no matter how many exposures i had, that does happen from time to time so i will work off one!

and you're so right about long exposures/bulb) because you're already basically doing just that! in bulb as you experiment with different timings(over 30 sec.the max most settings allow) for that correct shutter speed to the shot you were after. we both have posted shots as far as 30 minutes of more. thats why i stated starting at dark:30 and keep it rolling....and as you already know, in the middle of the night freezing your buns off.

we sure push a lot of infor in these comments, Nik. i hope people read them and gets the creative juice flowing. its not to brag in any way, im not a professional, im just passing on my mistakes so others dont have to go through the same agony, or repeats i have had to do to get it right! or sufficient to my liking. I'm sure many pass them up with. Wow that's too much to read, its a shame if that happens.

....just don't have much interest for shooting them anymore....
Chris it's still a good one and thanks for sharing... and I did read the comments thanks for the above.

Rob

I love the depth of the blue...

I like this Chris and I do like both yours and Nik's narratives - they are a wealth of info and helpful to many of us I'm sure. The clouds look like the remains of con trails - we had a lot of those on Friday around here.