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Christmas lights

There is something about the way lights reflect on water that almost always makes an attractive picture. This shot is of West Looe, looking upriver with an arch of the bridge at the right of the frame. Nearby two sailing boats have Christmas season lights running up their masts and rigging.

I tried several positions and exposures, all with a fairly low ISO of 100 to reduce the risk of noise in the darkest areas.

For this shot I was far enough away from the best reflections that I needed to extend the lens to 105 mm. At 10 seconds the picture was bright but the reflections in the water became too blurred.

This exposure was for 3.2 seconds at f7.1, which kept the reflections reasonably well defined, and I then tweaked a few settings in Lightroom: the exposure to improve the brightness, the recovery to bring some detail back in the brightest areas and the fill lighting to lighten slightly the dark walls of some of the buildings.

Canon D5, 105mm, 3.2 seconds at f7.1