Art Center Sunset

A short cold front brought some clouds to Arizona and the chance to capture the drama of a December sunset. The Tempe Town Lake is no longer the Tempe Town Puddle since the repair of the damn and refilling. The Art center is a very impressive building that always captures my attention as I drive by on an adjacent freeway. I  waited for the ideal combination of clouds and lighting to capture this image. I was also very excited to try some of the techniques I gained by attending a webinar by Joe Brady on adding drama to HDR images. This image is a three shot HDR process in Nik's HDR Pro Effex software. I used a Sekonic meter to evaluate the range of light from the setting sun through the shadows within the building. I prefer this method to just shooting a bracket of five images which sometimes leaves gaps in either the highlight or shadow areas.