Holy Cow! (2 edits)

Right at the Tomales Point Trailhead, in the Tule Elk Preserve, is Pierce Ranch which was a working dairy ranch established in 1858 and one of the oldest ranches on the Point Reyes Peninsula.   Unfortunately, after our hike I was too exhausted to spend time photographing the ranch and it’s old structures, but I did manage to capture a shot of the barn from the side and thought I’d present two different edits on the image just for fun.

The farm ceased operations in 1973 and three years later, Congress authorized creation of the wilderness area incorporating that ranch as habitat for the reintroduction of tule elk. Beginning in 1980, NPS invested in the rehabilitation of the ranch core, citing it as the best example of a nineteenth century west Marin dairy ranch. Pierce Ranch was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985, and was subsequently opened to the public as an interpretive site.

Hope you enjoy them!

Pierce Ranch @ Tomales Point, Tule Elk Preserve, Pt. Reyes National Seashore

Pierce Ranch @ Tomales Point, Tule Elk Preserve, Pt. Reyes National Seashore

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One Photo Focus – April 2016

For those of you who don’t know this challenge, it consists of everyone editing the same photo taken by one person.  Below you’ll find my image as well as the original image provided by Cee Neuner.  Thanks much to Cee for the original image.  I really loved working on it!  Please do check out Stacy’s blog when you have time to see everyone’s submissions.  It’s always fun to see everyone’s edits!

Basic Process:

• Used Lightroom to make basic adjustments to balance out light and shadows
• Removed Power pole and lines using healing brush in photoshop
• Added curve to sky
• Added a tree using a tree brush in the background to cover up vacancy left by the bottom of the pole
• Added a tractor
• Used Macphun Filter calm day at a reduced opacity to get the general tone
• Used Topaz Glow for detail in some areas like the flowers around the barn, the grass and the wood
• Used Topaz Impression very lightly to make it look more painterly
• Added a little bit of light in the sky right above the tractor
• Adjusted colors using layers in Photoshop

Edit by Lauramacky

Original by Cee Neuner

Before and After (2 images)

So the other day I was chatting with my chiropractor and he asked me if I could take one of his images and redo it.  Well, you know me right?  I couldn’t wait to take a crack at it and I didn’t want to hold back.  Do I ever???   He didn’t want me to give credit here so I am posting his “before” image with his blessing.  The “after” (my rework) is below it.

A couple of things I’m trying to notice more is light.  I loved the structure of the barn and the birds on the original image, but it just didn’t have much light so I created through Nik Color Efex.

I also didn’t think it had much interest regarding the sky so I did a quick fix and selected the barn, inverted the selection, masked it out and dropped a sky and a tree in.  The sky is actually from one of my own images which includes the hills to the right side of the barn and I obtained the tree from a site that has royalty free images, so I blended them together into the background.

I also love textures of barns, so I “tried” to bring that out more by some sharpening techniques.  Lastly, I applied a texture and colorized the entire image so it felt cohesive.   Enjoy the blast of color!

Original

After