michaelwilson
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Watson Lake in Prescott, Arizona
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Awards
Top Shot Award 22
Contest Finalist in Full Focus Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Celebrating Nature Day Photo Contest 2015
Exposure and more
Contest Finalist in Covers Photo Contest Vol 21
Contest Finalist in Monthly Pro Vol 11 Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Nature In HDR Photo Contest
Superb Composition
Absolute Masterpiece
Peer Award
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Outstanding Creativity
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jessicakirsh
October 05, 2015
AMAZING! I still need to get up there to see Watson Lake! I live in Cave Creek :)
cferrell7100
October 15, 2015
Congrats, I finally made it to the lake and no one can capture the beauty if it like you do. Great work!
JohnRW
October 25, 2015
Great Capture Michael, You have a Fantastic Body of work Congrats..Keep'm Coming ..
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken at Watson Lake in Prescott, Arizona. This location is very unique with the amazing granite rock outcroppings surrounding the lake.Time
Arizona has a wonderful monsoon season beginning in July. The monsoons bring daily thunderstorms into the area. I made this photograph in the late afternoon. The rock formation I am on is only accessible by foot when the water level is low.Lighting
The lighting was really awesome at this time. The sunlight was always changing with the quickly moving clouds illuminated different rock outcroppings in really amazing ways.Equipment
For this image I was using a Nikon D7000 with a Sigma 10-20mm lens. I was on a tripod to lock in the composition I wanted, and then just kept shooting trying to get a lighting bolt in the image.Inspiration
I did not know how long the low water level would make this location accessible. Because of the beautiful landscape I kept coming back to this spot during the storms until I captured the image I visualized in my mind.Editing
For processing I started with an HDR image. I then processed a couple of the bracketed images separately. The trees were kind of blurry due to the wind, and I was not happy with how some of illuminated rocks looked in the HDR image. So, I used the individual photos to mask back in on top of the HDR image to correct these issues.In my camera bag
I always carry my large tripod, which I really love. I typically shoot most landscape images on the tripod. Besides my camera body I have a wide angle lens and a telephoto zoom to cover a 35mm equivalent range of 10mm to 300mm.Feedback
Early morning and late evening hours always provide the best light for landscape images. I often stumble across a composition that I really like, and then have to decide if it would look better in the morning or afternoon. The type of image you can get from a particular landscape really changes with the time of day, the season, and the varying clouds in the sky. You may want areas of the landscape to be in shadow, or some great color in the sky. To get a landscape image you are really happy with often requires several visits to the same location when all the elements of the image come together and are like what you are visualizing.