Daily Image - Jan 2015 Archive

05 Jan 15. O.K., here we go with year 10 and a few very small changes as I indicated earlier. Taking advantage of some very lovely weather and a recent snowfall (in the mountains), we took off on New Years eve to travel up into the Skagit area where the eagles like to congregate in the winter to feed on the spawning salmon. The drive along the way on Highway 20 offers a number of delightful views, and Sauk Mountain is among them. There are many view points along the way offering shots of this local mountain, and on a clear day with fresh snow they are hard to beat, although there are areas with even nicer views which I'll share later. Zoom in and look at the terrain with a critical eye. If you are an outdoors type of individual, I'll wager that like me, you can imagine a ski run or two even though there aren't any. Seems to me that a wonderful opportunity is being missed. We saw a couple dozen eagles, and I'll share a portrait of one later in the week that was a prized shot for me. If you are anywhere local, do pay a visit to the area soon. On the return leg remember to allow time to visit Fir Island to take in the wintering over flock, some 10,000 strong, of Snow Geese. This image is pretty much straight from the camera, save for the fact that there wasn't a cloud in the sky, so I replaced the sky with one containing a few clouds and I've added my standard amount of micro contrast enhancement. I used a plug-in called Remask to do the sky replacement, and if you are of a mind to do masking, this is a very nice program. The sky in cloud image was quite a different color of blue, so I used a hue/sat adjustment layer to convert the blue to the color in the original shot. If you put the two images on top of each other, then use the move tool to drop down the original image a couple of inches so you can see both images at the same time, you can modify the new sky with the the hue/sat adjustment while looking at the original image so you can get the colors the same. While this may sound difficult, it is easy. Try it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /11.

06 Jan 15 . Continuing east on Hwy 20 from where I took yesterday's shot you come to the town of Marblemount. At the point where the road takes a solid 90 bend to the north (left), you have the option of continuing on heading up to Ross and Diablo dams and the end of the road in the winter, or keeping straight and taking the bridge crossing over the Skagit River heading up Lookout Mountain road. If you do so you will come to a pullout about 3 miles up that road offering a fantastic view of the Eldorado Mountains. While I'm not certain of this, I believe the main peak at that lookout is Diablo Mountain. We had the perfect weather aside from the fact that there was no snow at the pullout which had Maggie very disappointed. Today's submission was shot at the pullout and it is concentrating on just the one peak even though others are present. This presentation is the result of 12 adjustment layers on top of the original background shot. The original had a distinct cyan color cast in the shadows that needed addressing, and as this was taken the same day as yesterday's shot I needed some clouds to replace the solid boring blue sky and the sky color had to be adjusted to match the original shot. The B&W portion, which was the goal for this shot when I began working on it, took another 5 layers to get the result I wanted, two just for the sky, and another two to handle the snow on the hillside at the right plus one for adding a sense of depth achieved by use of a micro contrast adjustment. So today's image is in no way straight from the camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 9.

07 Jan 5. Due to a question posed to me about yesterday's submission, I went back to examine it only to realize that while I was shooting the picture I was observing a loose-snow avalanche. If you still have access to it look at the soft area at the right most portion of the mountains. A lucky shot to be sure. Midway between the two photos I've sent so far is the community (town) of Rockport which is home to the Skagit Bald Eagle Interpretive Center and the central location for all the Bald Eagle watching. They offer some local info, books and other stuff about the eagles, and the occasional slide show. They also keep a daily count of the birds found along the Skagit river section by section. The Center and the next two miles of road traveling east contain the best areas for watching the birds. Two miles north of the center, at the turnout at Milepost 100, is the launch site for rafting trips down the river to observe the birds from the water and the floats offer some very good views of the eagles on both side of the river. There are also some good spots along the road but you need to be observant for locations where it is safe to park. Today's portrait was taken about 100 yards up river from the Interpretative Center alongside the road. The bird was sitting in a tree perhaps 20 feet distant from the roadway but somewhat protected by numerous branches between us. As I was watching her sitting on the branch, looking hither and yon, she suddenly began screeching and I was fortunate to capture her in full voice. Today's submission took some effort to render suitable due to the environment in which the bird was located. There was a couple of branches between me and the bird that had to be cloned out, plus I had to crop out a fair portion of the original to get the bird sufficiently prominent. I could have cropped even tighter, perhaps I should have, but I liked the diamond framing provided by the diagonal branches at the four corners, so I left the crop as you see it. Feel welcome to crop even tighter for a very different look. I also blurred the photo, sans the bird, a small amount to further isolate the animal from the background. A bit of work, but much easier than that of yesterday. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/250 sec @ f / 5.6.

08 Jan 15. The first winter of our initial tour in the Navy treated us to a most magnificent ice storm, and one we'll never forget. For those of you who may remember the movie Dr Zhivago, it was similar to the scenes in that movie but more dramatic. The morning after the winds picked up and began banging the frozen branches into each other. It was as though we were walking around in a celestial music box. My only regret of that storm was that I didn't make a movie with sound of it, but the DSLR era was decades away. New Years day found us venturing out to the Pacific Ocean to take in some crashing waves and dramatic sunset. We got neither, but on the drive in both directions on HWY 101 we passed through Indian Valley, a highly shaded location roughly 8 miles west of Port Angeles. The trees bordering both sides of the road and for quite a distance hillside, for about a two mile stretch, were coated in a VERY heavy frost, making them appear as though they had experienced a mild ice storm. It was something to behold, and I took quite a few shots of what was there. The shiny surface on the water is ice. But, as it wasn't a real ice storm, and as this is Theatrical Thursday, I've endeavored to render the image as though it was an ice storm. Fortunately for us, we made the trip a day ahead of the heavy rains that undoubtedly washed all that beauty away. I took the base image, adjusted it to ensure I had the full range of zones from full black to pure white, cloned out a small distraction in the URH corner, applied my normal micro contrast enhancement, and took the result into the Glow plug-in. I applied the preset called air brush, reduced its opacity to 35%, and saved that out. The result of that is the image I'm sharing for today. While it isn't like a real ice storm, I think it close enough to give you the idea. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/160 sec @ f / 6.3.

09 Jan 15. We pick up today where we left off yesterday. As we were driving along Hwy-101, one of the cherubs commented that we were driving through a winter wonderland. I wasn't feeling well and slightly dozing and Jan was driving, but that comment got my attention. I had Jan pull over and got out to start shooting. Both the cherubs decided to follow Papa and were right next to the guardrail as I was working the area. The older said something about tasting the frost on the barrier posts, to which I commented "don't get your tongue stuck." That somehow translated into a challenge, I have no idea how, and as soon as the older started licking a post the younger followed. Not getting a stuck tongue on the first attempt, they elected to sample as many of the posts as time would allow. And without a single stuck tongue. The frost crystals were fully formed and of course no two were alike, so they also took a few moments to look at them up close. Of course, when you are licking them you are already pretty close. I'm gonna make scientists out of them yet! This photo isn't much until you get in very close, so zoom in and take a good look at the crystals, a fitting subject for a macro shot. There was a lot of material is this image that contributed nothing, so I cropped all that out. I also adjusted the white balance to remove a blue cast courtesy of the shade where I was shooting to return the frost to white. I didn't want the background to compete, in particular because it isn't all that interesting, so I selected it and applied a 2 pixel Gaussian blur to it to make it drop out. And of course my standard tiny amount of micro contrast enhancement was applied. That was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/400 sec @ f / 6.3.

12 Jan 15. On the offhand suggestion of another photo club member, I thought it would be fun to go see a waterfall (Ludlow Falls) I had never seen prior and one I never knew existed. A foggy Friday morning was just the opportunity, so the three of us headed out to the local (19 miles one way) small water front community of Port Ludlow, a location we had driven through a couple of times but never stopped to visit. Following the general directions I'd been given, we reconnoitered the location without any real problem, but wasn't sure we had actually found the correct location when we got there as there are neither signs nor directions informing you of the falls. At the spot where we parked, had too as there was no where else to drive, we noticed a piece of paper with some wet information, recall it was foggy, part of which told us we were where we needed to be. Leashing up Maggie, we started up a very gentle sloping nicely barked and maintained trail through a self guided indigenous plants garden, over a cute little bridge, and over a wee hill to find the falls. All of this adventuring encompassing less than a football field on a path that I would even consider handicapped accessible in the summer. The trip was really worth it and I'll definitely go back again. Jan and Maggie may even join me for a second go. The shot of the falls you are seeing today, the first of several, was taken in roughly what you could call the mid point of the falls. It is not very wide, quite shallow, and it looks to be very slippery. The stream that comprises the falls is fed by a boggy area above it that retains water all year round, so it is always running with the water somewhat brown from the tannin in the bog. If you live around here, do go visit it; you won't be disappointed! For this image, I made sure I had the full tonal range from black to white, added a tiny bit of micro contrast enhancement, and that was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/13 sec @ f / 4.8 on a tripod with a cable release.

13 Jan 15. The last several days have been treating us to some beautiful foggy landscapes. I went out on Sunday to shoot my cousin's farm in the fog, which led to a shot of a light house, followed by a lake, and finally ending up at a beach just down the road from the house. Every location offered something different and something nice. Among my favorite captures was a spider web in the shape of a coat hanger causing me to think that I was looking into the closet of the not so itsy bitsy spider who couldn't fit in the water spout. The fog had condensed on the web leaving it looking more like a string of transparent beads as opposed to pearls since they weren't very pearly colored. Trying to focus on them was a bit of a challenge due to both their very tiny size relative to the rest of the scene, the low light situation brought about by the fog, and a slight breeze that was coming off the water in the lake about 15 feet distant. I'm thinking this spider must be from the imperial class, maybe an emperor, as his wardrobe is apparently transparent. You judge for yourself. This is perhaps the first time I've shared a straight from the camera shot; it isn't even cropped nor have I added my standard micro contrast adjustment. It is one of four versions, the other three having been adjusted in one way or another. I was looking to emphasize the water droplets, but after all was said and done, I felt the original showed them off as well as the others, so I went with it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/100 sec @ f / 7.1.

14 Jan 15. Another spider web for today but very much unlike what I shared yesterday. As our mornings continue to be nicely foggy, I've been going out early to see what is available and today I noticed a spider web unlike any I've seen before. It was positioned horizontally in the air attached to two trees, a very thin new growth and a limb of a second or third growth. As I set up the camera and tried to focus it became obvious that auto focus just wasn't doing the job. I didn't realize how poorly it was doing its job until I switched to manual focus and realized that there were actually three webs present with the three making for an entirely different picture. This was my first time ever to encounter a spider who had created a high wire act along with safety net, and a lower act below it. Kinda clever was what ran through my mind. Zoom in to observe the construction of the safety net. The front left of the web is higher than the rest and as a result is whiter as you are looking through two layers at that point. Base image was adjusted to encompass the full tonal range, then a B&W plugin - Silver Efex Pro 2 - was used to convert to B&W. That was the entirety of the adjustment for today. With the light levels, very slight wind air currents, and need for depth in the webs, I had to go with a lot of trade offs. Hope to have another go at it tomorrow. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 640 (not much light this morning); 1/3 sec @f /18.

15 Jan 15. Went out for our morning walk today only to be greeted by what is probably the best show of god rays I've ever experienced. Most of our fog had dissipated, but enough remained for creating an impressive display! I immediately returned home, got the camera, and proceeded to shout almost 150 frames as I watched the show progress. In the end I had a collection unlike any I've recorded in over 50 years. It was simply spectacular. Jan picked the selection for today and I'll share another next week. This creative shot is the work of the Master; all I did was record it. I would have shared a more creative one, but sorta felt like you needed to see the greater picture before I share a much more creative one done by merely shifting the camera's position. More about that next week, so keep this image handy for a week or so. This shot is straight from the camera save for some small cloning I did in the upper right hand section. The trees in that area were not quite as dense and were allowing miniscule amounts of sunlight to show through. Unfortunately, it was not enough for you to recognize what was happening while serving to pull your eyes out of the frame, so I simple cloned in a bit more foliage to remove that light. I used a higher ISO than required to add some slight emphasis to the fog structure. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/800 sec @ f / 7.1.

16 Jan 15. I'm gonna make a wager that most of you, unlike the 3 of us, don't see winter weather as a wonderful time of the year. And even more unlike Maggie, who sees snow and ice as the high points of her existence. For those of you who especially don't like ice, I'd like to suggest that you are missing out on some wonderful photographic opportunities. You fortunately need not travel when it cooperates and comes to a location near you and you can simply walk to it. If walking on ice strikes you as less than safe, get a pole, drive a nail into one end, cut off the head, and use it to navigate your way to some creative landscapes. My shot for today was one where we had to drive to get it, but the road is usually clear or mostly clear where we go and the driving is generally without concern. It is also a location where the cherubs can break off a frozen stiletto and enjoy a cool dripping treat of fresh mountain water sans the silly bottle and marketing hype. I saw this ice age man alongside the road not far from his ice age garden and vineyard. This is one from a series of roughly 100 shots I took of ice covering the local vegetation as well as forming along the edges of waterfalls and logs in their paths. Hopefully you can "see" the man siting down, legs outspread (he may have been an early model as he appears to have more than two of them), and arms extended. The original shot was adjusted for both brightness and removal of a couple of hot spots caused by the flash required to supply the necessary light to balance the subject. I corrected for the hot spots by cloning the cooler ice onto the overly bright areas near the front of the photo. That is all that was done to achieve this look. The setting was quite dark with much of the composition in DEEP shade, so flash was required and lots of it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/60 sec @ f / 6.3 with full flash on a tripod.

19 Jan 15 . Hopefully there will be sufficient available bandwidth tonight to get this mailed after all the hoopla around here today. We return to Ludlow Falls for another look. This is a view looking upstream taken from a small open area just below the first viewing station and above stream from where the log was resting that was present in the previous image. Getting reasonably nice shots in this lovely setting is quite easy, as is also true of the more creative ones; all you need is a set of waders and you can walk out into the middle of the stream. Obviously you need pay attention to where you are stepping and where you place the tripod, but with a little attention to detail it wouldn't be all that hard. Even if you slipped, it is unlikely that you would suffer any real harm, although the equipment might not appreciate getting wet. If you look at the two images side by side you will immediately see the relationship between them. This base image received my standard B&W gradient map and curves adjustment layer which is my first step in any image plus a little micro contrast added which is my standard second step. And that's it for this one. Some of you may want to crop the image an inch or two all around for a very different look, so if that is more to your taste please feel welcome to do so. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 2.5 sec @ f / 25 to achieve a nice cottony look to the water.

20 Jan 15. Today's submission is another from our drive up Lookout Mountain Road. I was taking a series of shots of a waterfall while the cherubs were testing out things to lick and having finished the initial attempt at capturing the ice forming from the splash of the falling water, turned around to head back to the vehicle to see this composition. This is the view provided when standing in the middle of the road if you exclude stuff on either side that your eyes would also take in but which they, in combination with your brain, could elect to basically ignore. Not so the camera, so I've elected to just crop away that interfering material. I thought about flipping this shot L/R and presenting it as a rear view mirror look, but then decided to just leave it as is. The sky was mostly a pure blue that day and didn't make for a good backdrop in a B&W image, so I allowed a bit of the original color to "bleed" through to give the sky a more appealing look. As such, this isn't a pure B&W, but along the lines of what dad used to do with the assist of a few tinting colors. The base image was adjusted for full tonal range, then a duplicate layer was converted to a B&W and adjusted for 87% transparency, just enough to let a small amount of the blue sky to peek through from the underlying color layer. The transparency is what provided the slight blue tint to the sky in an otherwise B&W image. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 250; 1/1250 sec @ f /10.

21 Jan 15 . The fog that made for the lovely god ray images of which I'll share another tomorrow also provided some nice views of the tall trees around the house - many of which need to come down due to the combination of their height and proximity to the building - which normally we would have to travel to enjoy. That is unless the "nice" weather comes to us. For some reason I've always enjoyed foggy weather, even a couple of times when I was MUCH younger, and had to drive with the car door open to see the lines on the pavement. Of course with fog that thick, for the most part no one is traveling at any significant speed, so the travel can actually be a bit of fun, especially with the right person with you in vehicle. This shot was taken from the front of the house looking out at the drive that connects us with the local road. Although it looks like we are in the middle of nowhere - sometimes it feels that way with our extremely unreliable phone services - the spot where I'm standing is just a couple hundred feet from the roadway. I do like the mood this shot provides and certainly wouldn't mind experiencing this kind of weather far more often. The base image was given a miniscule tweak in global contrast adjustment followed by my standard micro contrast adjustment, but this time that adjustment was reduced to just half of normal. That was all that was done to it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 250; 1/2 sec @ f /16 on a tripod.

22 Jan 15 . Today's Theatrical Thursday's submission is a totally creative image. For this shot I made 6 different versions, first time I've ever done such, and Jan picked out the one I'm sharing. This was taken from the same location as was the previous one I shared, but using a different camera position. The shot I wanted was not going to be able to be recorded on a single frame, the dynamic range was just too much, so I made five shots one f stop apart and combined them into a single HDR (high dynamic range) image. That worked O.K. but I realized after taking the shot(s) that I had tipped the camera - intentionally - but not far enough to capture the top of the tallest tree while still slanting the trees way to much. So I first had to correct the image to straighten the trees, and then added a top to the tree whose top got clipped when I took the shot. After that I thought a little framing would finish it off nicely and so I did just that by adding a white vignette. So while what you are seeing is basically what my eye was seeing, it is substantially different from that which the camera was seeing. The creation of this began with five shots which I combined together using a product called Photomatix. It is generally the go to program for creating HDR images, and does a very nice job of so doing. Using that output as my base image, I first did a perspective alteration to straighten the trees, making them all as close to parallel as they were naturally. I then added an inch of blank canvas to the top of the frame where I added in the missing sky and tree top and then blended in the skyline to give it a seamless appearance. Then I added a B&W gradient layer and curves layer on top of that to insure I had the full dynamic range I wanted. Next, I added a micro contrast adjustment, copied that result 6 times and used those layers to create the 6 individual compositions. For the one I'm sharing, I also added some global detail enhancement to accentuate the fog particles - observe that it is breaking up near the ground in the LRH corner - and finished it off with a small white vignette. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/1000 sec (middle of 5 frames) @ f /10.

23 Jan 15. The close up I'm sharing today is something a little different, in that it is taking in a bit more of the surroundings than I normally would, but without which the story would be incomplete. While the cherubs were practicing their version of fencing with icicles, I was contemplating how best to illustrate the result of millions of tiny splashes of water falling on a rock, beading up, and forming hundreds, if not thousands, of little beads of ice that together looked, in its own way, like the lens of a huge led light, or somewhat more obtusely, like the compound eye of an advance form of insect. The rock was near the base of a beautiful little waterfall and by little I mean perhaps 70 feet total in height from the very top of the hill to where it passed under the road via a culvert. Everything near this water fall had ice on it in one form or another, and I took many pictures of the differing formations, this being one of the more atypical ones I found there. If you are near an area with freely running water and get some reasonably cold weather, the kind that makes for frozen conditions, do venture out, with or without your camera, to see some really nice creations near the waters edge. The base image was cropped some to limit what you can see, than adjusted to ensure I had the full dynamic range, and then I added my normal micro contrast adjustment. That was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 250; 1/300 sec @ f /10. Hope you enjoy, dave

26 Jan 15. The trip that included the cherubs licking the guardrail posts was a trip to see the Pacific Ocean at LaPush. I was hoping for lots of weather and some really nice wave action, the kind that would have made for a nice video with sound. What we got was an almost flat surface and virtually no wave action. O.K, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but the wave action reminded us of the Gulf Coast stuff and that is more than boring. I took a few shots, mostly of the driftwood and the rocks out in the water, but with a totally blah sky, none of them were very interesting, except perhaps for a couple that had potential, but not on their own. A ways out from the shore line is a string of rocks, and with just a small amount of imagination, let's say along the line of what the cherubs might display daily, there is a magical sea creature, likely the predecessor to Nessie, and a bit more frightening. I got a pretty good capture of the critter and have elected to share that shot with you. Unfortunately, the sky wasn't appropriate for such a viewing, so I had to correct that situation to create the story. Starting with the base image, I made two copies of it and blended them together using one for the sky and the other for the driftwood. I then added a layer of heavy handed micro contrast enhancement to make the clouds come to life. Next, I added a gradient map with curve adjustment to ensure I had sufficient dynamic range, and then adjusted just the greys in the image to give substance to the rocks, and masked out that adjustment from the rest of the image. Then, to make the critter (rocks) the center of attention, a selected just them, linked a curves adjustment to just that selection, and severely darkened the rocks to almost a silhouette. Following that I added an adjustment layer to darken and manipulate the entire scene, added a mask to that layer, and applied a black to white gradient on it to achieve the final look. Getting that gradient the way I wanted took a bit of time, but it was what made it come to life. With luck, it all comes together for you. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /11.

27 Jan 15. Today's picture was shot with the idea of it becoming a B&W image, and while most components of the composition came into place as I got things set up, the sky didn't play well with the rest of the group and refused to provide a cloud or two, remaining totally blah. I took the shots anyway thinking I could replace the sky and while I likely could have, it was proving to require more work than I wanted to invest tonight so I elected another approach which was that of displaying it as if it had been shot with a very fast B&W film that displayed a fair amount of grain. For those of you who love B&W, and especially those who liked the old grainy films, this may bring back some fond memories. I made another version of it lacking the grain which has a very different look which I prefer to the grainy film looks, but I know that there is a big school of individuals who like the grainy stuff so I decided to go with that version. What the grain adds in character, it subtracts from fancy. Two schools; two looks. The background image was adjusted with a gradient layer to insure full tonal range, then run through a B&W plug-in to get the grainy look. The gradient layer combined with a curves layer provided for the simpler black to white look with the white being primarily all of the sky which struck me as somewhat boring. That was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/500sec @ f / 6.3.

30 Jan 15. As part of an annual physical on Monday it was suggested I get a pneumonia vaccination, to which I agreed. By Monday evening I was feeling the effects of the inoculation but assumed all was normal. By Tuesday afternoon things were starting to go south and by the evening the vaccination was awarded a TKO. Finally back to normal today and sending out Friday's missive rather late, but skipping the two others I missed. This is a shot of a daisy I took at one of our local nurseries but one with a really cluttered background. Sufficiently so that I thought it would be fun to just get rid of it all and substitute a colored background instead. With the green of the stem available along with the yellow of the stamen, I picked up those two hues, setting them as foreground and background colors, and created a gradient with the two. Tried going from green to yellow and reverse, and settled for what you see. The flower was added to the background to provide the final composition. So a creative version of a real flower with the creative aspect just being the background. Starting with the original image, I first used the eyedropper tool to set my foreground and background colors by sampling from the flower itself. Then I selected the flower, inverted that selection to get the cluttered background, and deleted the background. Then I created a new gradient layer and made that layer a blend of the yellow and green colors. Using the flower layer to create a mask, I put the mask on the gradient layer which allowed the underlying flower to show through. A quick and simple way to isolate just the object of interest. Obviously a gradient layer wouldn't always be appropriate, but such can be used effectively. Nikon D300s; 18-200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 9.

31 Feb 15. Since I'm a couple images behind, thought it might be appropriate for a Saturday Night Special. This is a fun image I found while walking the streets of Port Townsend. I've seen it every time we've visited, but just tried capturing it on a whim a couple weeks back. The wall of this building is made of brick, now badly faded, as is the painting on the brick, so I took the shot with the idea that it might be fun to try and bring it back to life. The building being much taller than I, the camera had to be tilted at a steep angle to capture all, or at least, most of the wall which resulted in a very tilted image. So that added to the challenge of bringing out the character of the wall on top of which it wasn't very brightly lit. Taken together, it presented itself as a challenge I thought it would be fun to try. You are seeing the results of that effort. Along the way I also thought the letters should be a bit more prominent, so that was one more aspect of restoring this old wall with a one time very familiar slogan painted on its bricks. I would imagine many on these distribution lists will not even recognize the product being advertised, but it brought back fond memories of a nicer time for me. The original image had a few distractions like wires, so I first removed all the distractions, then straightened it to make it look like a real building. Then I used a gradient map to get as much of the original color back as possible, but it wasn't much. Then I used a curves adjustment layer to darken everything overall. Next I applied a micro adjustment layer to give the letters a little more emphasis, then added some overall detail enhancement, and then selected the letters Bull Durham to significantly darken the yellow, then inverted that selection and adjusted the colors of the bricks separately. Finally I used a levels adjustment to get the final color relationships. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f / 5.6.