An HDR image from my “Poppin a few with the Nifty Fifty” photo walk in (Little) Washington, North Carolina this past winter. It seemed like everything on the street was pretty dreary except for the awning at the front of Washington Jewelers, est. 1962. So, here it is in all of it’s colorful beauty.

• Photo Art – Texture for Real

This was another exercise in strategic cropping since I was limiting myself to one prime lens. All of the zooming was done by my two legs that day.

Processing: Five images were loaded into Nik HDR Efex Pro for tone mapping and selective Control Point processing to add some structure to the bricks. Then I used Adobe Photoshop for Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlights to balance the tones. Using Hue/Saturation, I adjusted the colors of the bricks and added a little life to the awning. Sorry bout that. Sometimes an image needs a little more than what is natural.  Artistic license, ya know!  I finally added a bit more depth with Curves.

• Photo Art – Texture for Surreal

And speaking of artistic license, I’ve included a How To Do Stuff (HTDS) segment on turning this image into a textured, artsy, grainy work using Photoshop.I like to think of this as a more artistic version since I’ve distorted reality enough to make it look less photographic and more techno-graphic. Notice, in the shots below, that I didn’t need to apply very strong effect in the Texture > Grain selections to get this “Beyond Reality” look.I’ve enlarged a portion of the almost, realistic image for comparison.Sometimes a subtle application of an artistic filter in Photoshop can add a lot to an image.

• Photo Art – Texture for Old Times Sake

I know, this is not at all related to the current post. But, since I’ve been on a monochrome roll lately, I decided to include an old timey version of this shot, in faded sepia of course.

Equipment used: Nikon D700 with AF 50mm f/1.8 D lens set to f/6.7, ISO 800.