7am at Camana Bay, Grand Cayman

I love the architecture at Camana Bay, a new community built in the last few years on Grand Cayman. The development is a massive undertaking by Dart Realty, and includes a movie theater and a school in addition to mixed commercial / residential buildings. I must applaud Camana Bay for it's foresight in planning; In much of Western Canada where I'm from, we have made the mistake of developing big box outlet malls on one edge of town and suburban sprawl box-houses on the other, and linking them with congested thoroughfares filled with idling cars. Everybody knows this and complains about it, yet I believe it continues because of developers and banks wanting to make a quick dollar, and people wanting the biggest house for the least amount of money. What's the trade off? Community for anonymity. Walking to work for a commute, fresh air for exhaust.
But I digress...this post is about photography after all...

  So this morning I dragged myself out of bed at 6am, despite my usual insomniac's bedtime of 1:30am. And it was worth it. The water in the harbour at Camana bay was still and reflected a mirror image of the sunrise. The light was fairly soft, yet bright enough to give the sky contrast.
despite the miserable-invisible flies that feasted on my exposed flesh, the morning was well-worth the effort getting up.
 All of these images required a tripod to achieve small apertures and long exposures, and still be sharp. As a rule of thumb, always use a tripod when shooting landscapes or architecture. The first images is an HDR composite of three images, using photomatix pro. The tone was manipulated by adding a channel mixer adjustment layer and bumping up the red channel.
The next four are composites by layering two images in photoshop, then using a layer mask and low-to-medium opacity brush to paint away the top layer.  This achieved the effect of a neutral density filter.
The last shot of the palms is nearly straight out of the camera, except for a slight adjustment for contrast and vibrance in the camera raw editor, and of course some sharpening. (i sharpen all of my images)
All were shot in raw.

I hope you enjoy, if you have any questions about the images please comment and I'll respond asap.

Thanks,
Jim

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