I love this setting. I discovered Pope Farm Park last year as the sunflowers were blooming. It's an absolute brilliant sight that produces cracking images. This time of year, the crops aren't even planted, so no chance to include sunflowers in my photo. But I did happen to arrive one late afternoon just after some big storm went through. The resulting sky was filled with all different types of clouds, and a sun the was shining brightly on the countryside.
I took a number of shots from various angles. In the end, I had two images I adored, and I couldn't decide between them. I showed them to my wife, and she couldn't decide either. Each has its own plusses and minuses that made them special.
But we finally decided on this image. The way the shadows stretch from the fence line is very dynamic. Adding the sun with the rays is a great touch, and luckily I was there at just the right time of day for this.
Post Processing:
* Chromatic Aberration
* Retouch dust spots
* Topaz Adjust 5
* Nik HDR Efex Pro
* Slight shadows boost
* Dodge the fence
* Dodge the sun to restore the blown out center (Nik and Topaz made it an ugly grey)
* Topaz DeNoise
* Aperture's Noise Reduce
* Increase black point a bit
* Increase brightness a lot
* Increase saturation with lower vibrancy
* Purple and green color adjustments
* Dodge the upper corners to reduce vignette
* Export as TIFF
* Resize
* Sharpen Edges
* Save as JPEG
Statistics
Place: 33 out of 134 Avg (all users): 6.0739 Avg (commenters): 7.4444 Avg (participants): 6.0000 Avg (non-participants): 6.1182 Views since voting: 628 Views during voting: 306 Votes: 176 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
There is so much to love about this picture. The composition is great. You've managed to get 2/3 sky, 1/3 treetops, and 1/3 grass making for 4/3 along the horizontal axis! That makes for an additional 1/3 of a picture as a bonus! :) I really like the sun burning through and the shadows for those two wonderful trees. I hope to see this score very well in the overall rankings.
Great processing to capture all of that at once. Not the perfect setting, but not bad either. Maybe a person at the picknick table would add a certain something extra?
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