Showcasing Experimentation

This started as a not very remarkable photo of the mist in the hills, and even after I had done all the standard editing, it didn’t have enough of the definition or contrast between the layers of trees that I wanted, so I decided to experiment. (I’m always afraid to experiment on a photo I already like.) So……….. I experimented waaaaayy past the point I’m normally comfortable. Having already done the standard stuff, I started trying to manipulate all the color curves at once on a composite graph, which didn’t work at all. Then I started manipulating just the greens, but that just looked eerie, and reminded me of the gases used in WW I, so I stopped manipulating pure greens in about 5 seconds. Red turned to an icky pink by itself, so that was no good. I finally manipulated the reds, greens and blues one by one, and then went back and tinkered some more with the color graphs and then the illumination graph. The result below is the one I was finally happy with. You can see the reddish hill, signal towers, and some houses on the bottom, then the dark first line of trees, fading to a bluish purple, and then more of a pure purple in the second tree line. Then in the mid right, you can see the faint purple shadows of the trees in the third line – the ones most buried in the mist on the farthest level back. Revealing those took some doing, I can tell you!

Posted for K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge: Showcase Yourself!!!, in which they encouraged experimentation.