Smokies

I had previously mentioned in my post about editing that I had gone on a photo trip with two friends to Smoky Mountains National Park and that I was spending a bit of time editing those images.  I have completed the editing process and have just finished processing the first of these images.

Smoky Ridges I

Copyright Howard Grill

Smoky Ridges II

Copyright Howard Grill

These are obviously the same image with different toning.  I find the journey to a final image is often interesting and frequently unplanned, at least for me.  This image started as an HDR sequence, but when going through the sequence I found that I particularly liked one of the underexposed images which turned the mountain ridges into simple graphic shapes. I therefore abandoned the HDR idea and stuck with the one exposure that drew my attention.  And that underexposed version had a brownish sepia color that seemed to suit the image. I also noticed that many of my early morning images had a decidedly blue tint, and I enjoyed that as well.

So how did I end up with these final photos?  I felt that the 'simple graphic shape underexposed image' could be simplified even further by converting to black and white in order to remove any color that was not the pure tint.  I did the conversion using Silver EFex Pro 2 and made two versions, a sepia/brown one and a cyanotype/blue one.  I then cropped off the bottom 25% or so of the image, as I found that the darker tones at the bottom of the photo drew attention away from the more interesting changes in tonality evident at the top.

Finally, I found the image (particularly the sky) to be a bit too bland and therefore blended some textures into the photograph.  I ultimately used two textures for each image, one for the sky and the other for the mountains.  The sky texture is the same for both, though applied at different opacities, while the mountain textures are different for each version.  I felt the gentle application of the textures gave the images a more interesting and 'grittier feel'.