The Photo

This is another shot from the Amazon, taken just before dawn.
I went to the same pier every morning I was there to shoot the sunrise, and every day the conditions were a little different.
On this particular morning (my fourth) one of the local fishermen had left his canoe there overnight.
My memory of these mornings are the warmth in the air at 5.30am in the morning, the gentle light, my wife beside me on the pier, the noises of the rainforest around us, and the overwhelming peace and beauty of it all.
The other shots from the same location on different days are here:

Friday [link]
Saturday [link]
Sunday [link]

Technique

For many of the shots I took from this pier, I didn’t include a foreground, preferring to shoot the sky and it’s reflection with the horizon across the middle.
On this day, the small canoe really added to the atmosphere of the scene, so I moved around the pier until I could compose it without detracting from any of the other elements. I wanted the reflection of each cloud to be visible in the water, as well as the water in the bottom of the boat.
I stuck with a few classic compositional rules, using the boat as a diagonal line to lead the eye into the picture, and placing the horizon on a third.

In terms of exposure, I took spot meter readings from the wood of the pier and from the reflected water to ensure they were within 5 stops of each other and wouldn’t be lost to highlights or shadows, and then measured the sky, which was 2 stops brighter than the water (about the norm for reflections).
I used an exposure in between the reading for the pier and the reading for the water, and then used a 2 stop neutral density filter on the sky to give it the same exposure as the reflections.

With shots like this I always use a tripod as I find the extra time taken in setting up the shot forces me to consider composition more, as well as ensuring a sharper image.

Post Processing

This shot is pretty much exactly as it came out of the camera in a RAW file.
I cropped an area off the right of the image which had nothing happening in it, and brightened the shadows a little. I then tweaked the contrast a small amount using the levels setting in Apple Aperture 2, and finally ran the image through Neat Image to reduce any noise.

For sharpening, I used some advice from =jjuuhhaa to bring out more midtone contrast (Threshold 0, Radius 55 and Amount 15)...thanks Juha

Metadata
Taken on Rio Juma, The Amazon, Brazil
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20 | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) hard neutral density graduated filter
1/8 | f9.5 | 10mm | ISO200

Workflow in Apple Aperture. Title in PS