One of the best elements of digital cameras is the freedom that they allow photographers.  There is absolutely no penalty for experimenting and, frankly, no reason that one shouldn’t try anything and everything that he wonders about.

I was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for a shoot and happened to be on the north shore walking along the lakefront.  Unlike the Chicago lakefront, the Milwaukee lakefront has some cliffs.  I was atop one of these cliffs looking out at the beach.  What immediately caught my eye was the fact that the scene was essentially split into five different color bars: from top to bottom, the white cloud layer, the bluish black of the horizon, the blue green of the water, the yellow green of the beach water and the orange of the sand.

I set up my tripod and took a couple of shots.  They didn’t turn out because the water was too sharp.  I then decreased the size of the aperture to something crazy small, at first f20 and then f25, and had the shutter open for 30 seconds.  This was the result of that.  Everything turned out smooth and undulating.  I’ve been asked numerous times what type of filter I used on this photo to get the results and people are shocked to learn that I didn’t use anything more than a long exposure.