This shot of the China Pavilion is an alternate shot I took from the one posted previously where I was laying down with my camera in the large puddle you can see on the right of this image. While I think the previous shot is the stronger shot with the completely reflected foreground I do like this more traditional shot as well. Even though you don’t get the mirror reflection the wetness of the ground gives a nice sheen to the ground and the little puddles help capture some reflected details.

Shooting/Editing China Pavilion After the Rain

This was shot again with the Nikon D810 and Nikon 14-24 2.8. I chose to shoot this rather low with none of the tripods legs extended. Changing the height and angle of the shot actually drastically effects what is and is not reflected in the water. Additionally shooting low really helps the Temple of Heaven feel larger and create stronger leading lines to it. This was a 5 shot bracket though I used a single shot as my base layer and 2 underexposures to control the highlights which I blended in using luminosity masks. I did a bit of cleanup on the ground to remove some junk and then I did my basic levels adjustments along with using Nik Color Efex Pro Contrast filter. I did some very light color balancing to remove the overall red cast the image had taken on and then added selective vibrance. I did some manual dodging and burning to bring more focus to the Temple of Heaven and then denoised the sky before doing my sharpening techniques on the foreground. I always make sure that when sharpening I mask out the sky from the sharpening. You do not want to sharpen the sky as this just adds noise.