Drapes

Drapes, a photo by Tony DeSantis Photography on Flickr.

This was a photo that was a lot of fun to work on. Getting to where I thought the colors were right with the contrasts and textures was probably the toughest but still a lot of fun to work on.  It didn't take long in time but I did work on it over a few days.  The first processing was easy but I couldn't seem to nail down the contrasts of the wall to the seaweed.  I had to keep coming back to it until I got it correct in my minds eye.

This is a wall on the side of the pier in Seal Beach. I am sure the seaweed got stuck here when the tide rose. When the water receded the seaweed was draped over the wall. I thought it seemed interesting enough to take a few shots of. I also knew that I would need to do this as an HDR to get the colors, texture and depth that I wanted to make it look interesting enough.

The Shot:
Standard 3 shot HDR +2, 0, -2, Hand Held, F/5.6, ISO 400, 24-105L @ 28mm

Post Processing:
>Raw-Remove Blacks-Remove Sharpening, Add Noise Reduction (Luminance 40, Luminance Detail 20
>Save all 3 images as Tiffs
>Photomatix Detail Enhancer

CS-5:
>Topaz Adjust-Add Color and Detail
>Color Efex Pro 3.0
  >Pro Contast-Adjust Contrast and Color Correction
  >Tonal Contast-Add Detail
>Adjustment Layer-Hue/Sat-Enhance Greens (yellow adjustment)
>Topaz Infocus-Sharpening of overall photo
>Adjustment Layer-Hue/Sat-Enhance Yellow and Greens in wall for overall contrast between seaweed and wall for better dimension
>Topaz Simplify-Adjustments to remove detail in wall for painterly look (Adjust to taste)
>Texture added Opacity Lowered to taste
>Framed and Sized for Posting