AMBER POLUTION

ISO 100, f/20, 4 minutes, 19mm

  We have had 3 straight days of rain in East Tennessee this week. It has been absolutely dreary and ugly. The rivers and streams have been swollen and flooding everywhere.
  When I got to work this morning the rain had somewhat subsided for a while and I could see some low, fast-moving clouds moving across the lake. This looked so cool to me so I grabbed my gear and ran out to the dock to try and catch a long exposure.
  When I got to the dock, I noticed that the rain had lifted the water levels to the point that the water was up even with the dock. Even in the spring time, when the lake is at it's highest, the dock sits 5-6 feet above the water. I have never seen anything like it in the 13 years I have been working here.
  I set the camera up and decided I would start out with a 4 minute exposure to gauge the light. About 2 minutes into the exposure rain started falling in very small drops. I was worried that it might ruin my camera so this 4 minute shot would be the one and only one I would take.
  When the shutter finally tripped at 4 minutes and I looked at the LCD, I was both happy and disappointed. It was still slightly underexposed and would have loved to take another shot at 6 minutes to get a bit more light.
  I was happy, however, that the two outside lights that were mounted on the building behind me had shined an amber light on the scene that I really liked. Photographers that shoot a lot at night call this light pollution but it is just a term that means it isn't natural light.
  Lightroom helped me bump the exposure up and and fine tune things and I cropped out a bit at the bottom of the image that was distracting.