I wish the foliage challenge was earlier in the month, as I had some great shots that would have fit it, including this one. Oh well, guess I will have to use this as my free study entry. Luckily voting for the free study will be nearly complete when the foliage voting starts, so hopefully the voters won't be worn out on foliage.
This is a scene not far from my house, as you enter a park. The leaves were perfect, including being just brushed off the road by the light traffic. I included the speed limit sign as a part of the scene partly because it gives a starting point of reference, and partly because cloning it out would probably be a DQ for removal of a major element. We'll see how this plays with the voters, who have killed me before for including a sign in a scene like this.
Post Processing:
* Chromatic Aberration
* White Balance
* Decrease exposure
* Increase recovery
* Decrease black point
* Increase vibrancy
* Heavy highlights and shadows (I took three shots for an HDR, but that conversion wasn't working the way I wanted)
* Dodge and decrease saturation of the sign
* Topaz DeNoise
* Topaz Adjust
* Clone out two irrelevant signs
* Increase exposure and recovery
* Increase black point
* Increase contrast
* Increase saturation and vibrancy
* Increase definition of non sky areas
* S-curve
* Levels
* Increase red/yellow/orange saturation
* Increase sky blue saturation and luminance
* Dodge the sign
* Export as TIFF
* Resize
* Slight sharpen edges
* Save as JPEG
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Wow, thank you all for the great comments. The most I have had during voting in a long time.
Statistics
Place: 78 out of 311 Avg (all users): 6.1399 Avg (commenters): 7.5000 Avg (participants): 6.1091 Avg (non-participants): 6.2424 Views since voting: 662 Views during voting: 254 Votes: 143 Comments: 12 Favorites: 0
but a fabulous ride!
Love such lonely country roads across fall foliage. Beautiful! Not too keen on the speed limit board grabbing all the attention though.
The standard lovely fall shot would require you to move forward a few feet and eliminate the sign. But shooting from where you chose, including the sign, gives the photo just a bit more "oomph" - that lovely slow lazy fall day - dictated by a sign.
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