This is the tennis court at the old YMCA near my home, buried under two feet of snow the day after the second blizzard rolled through the Denver area. I thought this was bleak and gorgeous all at once, especially since the city has purchased the property to expand a water treatment facility and all of this soon will be torn down. I like the way the snow sticks to the fence and trees.
I shot this with my wide angle and polarizer while standing in two feet of snow the day after the second blizzard rolled through. I'd been out at least an hour by the time it occurred to me to shoot this for Fences, and my jeans were sopping wet (from other ill-fated shots that required being down in the snow) and the cuffs had actually frozen. I was shivering so badly by the time I got to the tennis court that the only way to take a clear shot without a tripod (which I discovered doesn't work so well in two feet of snow) was to hold my elbows in and hold my breath until the shutter was finished. Good thing the sun was out or the whole session would have been a waste!
I had a hell of a time coming up with a sharpening protocol that didn't completely ruin the shot. I must have spent three hours tackling it from every angle I could think of! I tried the gothic glow out of sheer desperation and to my utter amazement it did the trick, in combination with a light application of Sharpen Edges, which I don't think I have ever seen anyone here use.
Bonus point: My mom called me today specifically because she wants a 16x20 print to be the winter scene over the fireplace (she rotates them seasonally), so no matter how the scoring goes, I WIN!!!!
In Nikon View 6:
Convert to b/w
bump contrast
In PS CS2:
Crop/rotate
Neat Image
clone out power line
dup layer - hard light
gothic glow, dropped onto new layer and scaled back
flatten image
shadow/highlight
dodge/burn fence, tree trunk
color balance: (h: yellow, m: red, s: blue - all very slight adjustments)
resize to 640
dup layer - normal
sharpen edges, scale back to 20%
save for web
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Woot! Second personal best in a row! AND my first appearance in the top 20. ROCK!
Statistics
Place: 19 out of 315 Avg (all users): 6.4115 Avg (commenters): 7.6667 Avg (participants): 6.2079 Avg (non-participants): 6.5409 Views since voting: 1698 Views during voting: 373 Votes: 260 Comments: 19 Favorites: 1 (view)
Even though the focus of this photograph doesn't seem to be on the fence, IMO, I still think this is a great shot. I love the color/tone, too. A 9. Good luck. :)
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