I really liked this building -- but it was behind first a no trespassing sign, and second a large barbwire fence on some land some chemical company owns now (grrr). My wife pulled up in front of the building, which is about 600ft from the entrance to the chemical company, where a security guard hut stood.
I hopped out of the car, not expecting any trouble -- as I walked up the fence, my wife yelled out that the guard was watching me. I waved my camera and pointed at the old building. I then took a few shots, but couldn't get the angle I wanted. I looked over and then 2 men were standing there surveying my behavior. I took a couple more shots, and walked back to the car.
My wife suddenly pointed out the turkey vultures circling the building, and I pulled the camera out in time to catch one landing on the clock tower. I was far away, and don't have any reasonable telephoto.
Every ounce of processing (levels and constrast) was to make up for the fact that I didn't set my camera setting correctly for the lighting (was too nervous about the guards), so the building was dark and the sky was overwhelming. I do not expect it to do well at all.
Here are my steps, which I believe adhere to the basic rules:
cropped
adjusted levels to compensate for extreme darkness
unsharp mask
adjust contrast and bightness up to taste
decompose to red/green/blue channels
eliminated red channel
mixed blue in at 11% with green at 100%, in NORMAL mode
flattened image
rotate -.3 deg
reduce contrast/brightness to make up for overwhelming white sky
adjust levels back towards white a tad
resize
border
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I passed by this on the first go-around, voting only, as needed to come back to it.
That being done, the post-processing used here makes this look like a 40-50 yer photograph. Well seen !
Focus is a little soft. I think the detail in the roof shingles would have been good to bring out. A little more contrast would have brought out the details a little better as well.
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