12th? I'm stunned. There were so many amazing images in this challenge!
A heartfelt thank you to all those who took the time to comment and thought this was worthy of such high votes.
The image was taken at my favourite place here in Auckland - Cornwall Park. This was actually the Plan B. My Plan A involved getting my teenage daughter to run through the thick rows of spruce pines at the park, but she chickened out on me.
Oh, and those white spots? ... ummm, that's bird poop... but they do look a little like fossilised fairies, right? ;D
Also, many thanks to my wife, Rina, who patiently guided me through post processing til I achieved what I wanted.
The steps:
- Cloned out cars and bits of sky in background, as well as some minor distractions in and around the tree roots.
- Channels adjustment layer, monochrome. Played around with channels to brighten light areas.
- Levels adjustment layer to darken shadows a little more, rather than using burn tool.
- Resize.
- Smart Sharpen, 50% 1.0
- Smart Blur, 1.0 10.0
- Gaussian Blur @ 5.0 then faded to 20%
Here's the original, if anyone's interested...
Statistics
Place: 12 out of 127 Avg (all users): 6.5694 Avg (commenters): 7.3500 Avg (participants): 6.2593 Avg (non-participants): 6.6728 Views since voting: 1929 Views during voting: 449 Votes: 216 Comments: 29 Favorites: 5 (view)
Looks like a magic tree with tentacles to me. I like the composition, esp. the two roots reaching toward the viewer. The title leaves me wondering what it was that used to be fairies. With more contrast, I would've voted higher. 5.
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