I'm catching up on posting and commenting tonight, but have a ways to go. This was taken at Big Foot State Park, near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It was a lovely little park across from the main lake. The trees should be filled with leaves in another week to 10 days. This scene was interesting to me as it has elements of fall/autumn yet also we see the signs of spring in the grasses and bits of color. It's the site of the boy in the red shirt who is fishing in my other recently posted shot.
@macromover I used Color Efex filter in post processing -- it has a graduated filter with different tones you can choose. I blended the golden tone into the sky, then added a second filter and rotated the color to the lake and then lightened the tone to look like a reflection.
I'm glad I read your explanation just above, because I couldn't figure out why this didn't look quite natural to me. Reflections are normally about 1 stop darker that the primary scene, so this didn't compute to what I expected. That doesn't mean I don't like it, because I do. I was just confused.
@rvwalker It's been interesting playing around with this particular filter. That's good to know re the one-stop darker for the reflection. I like HDR and other processing choices, as you know, but prefer to use it for as natural as possible -- or as obviously processed for some other purpose. I can adjust the saturation/color level to reflect this next time.
@taffy I agree re HDR. I use it too, but hopefully the viewer won't realize it. So far, I have never successfully used the "overcooked" style of HDR, but maybe someday...
