Sunset reflections

Sunset is my favorite time of day to shoot, as it is for probably a lot of photographers.  You get some really interesting light and often the cloud patterns are interesting too.  Sometimes, you get both, and those are the days that you remember.  This one found us outside of Austin with time on our hands, literally looking for a place to take a few photos while we passed the time.  We happened upon this place and nature was kind enough to bless us with a beauty of a sunset.  As luck would have it, there was a pond in just the right place to capture some reflections.  Normally, people don't shoot straight into the sun since it is so bright that it will really blow out a lot of the photo, but using HDR in a shot like this really works for me.

This is a 6 exposure HDR taken at f/11, with exposures ranging from +2 to -3.  The files were merged into an HDR in Photomatix, and then I made some adjustments in PSE around Contrast, and that's it!