Walkway over ponded water on the floodplain of Salt Lick Creek in the Lake Katherine State Nature Preserve, Jackson Co., Ohio. The foreground and midground are in the shade of a 15m cliff. Background trees illuminated by the golden light of the late afternoon sun. Recent high water has left the leaf litter and walkway with a thin veneer of fine, grayish silt. Lens at 28mm.
Pseudo-HDR using Wukong beta with ten exposures; no additional tweaking in Wukong.
In Photoshop: Noise Ninja, small saturation bump, sharpen, chromatic aberration fix (distort filter), minimal crop to remove small distracting element, resize, border, save for web.
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This is quite wonderful - possibly too restrained, which is its virtue because it is enormously dramatic/graphic, for dpc, although this was a tough challenge to compete in. The subtle contrast between the reflected trees and the trees themselves just enhances the pull of the verticals.
This looks like places I have visited recently. I like seeing the tops of the trees reflected in the water. I would like to have seen a boost in contrast to add some punch to that reflection and to create some more depth in the light shining thru the trees in the background.
EDIT to add after the challenge: They must use this same kind of boardwalk at all the state parks in Ohio lol.
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