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Ice Age Scenic Trail
Ice Age Scenic Trail
giantmike


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Free Study 2010-11 (Advanced Editing VII)
Camera: Canon EOS-50D
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Location: Madison, WI
Date: Nov 1, 2010
Aperture: 9
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/13
Galleries: Nature, Rural
Date Uploaded: Nov 1, 2010

I'm sure some people are wondering who the weirdo is that posted their Free Study photo on the morning of the 1st. That would be me :)

This is the new paved bike/walking trail the city of Madison added to the Ice Age Scenic Trail this summer. It's a very nice bike trail that connects two parts of the city, making it possible to get more places without riding on dangerous roads. One thing I really enjoy about this trail is how they made it windy with some nice rolling hills. This creates a lot of opportunities for some very nice photographs.

On the day before this shot was taken, I was walking my dog through this area, noticed this very nice area, and took a photo almost just like this. However, I had my aperture very wide, so the resulting image had a very shallow depth of field, and just didn't look right. When I got up the next morning, I noticed that the light seemed very nice, so before heading to work, I grabbed my camera and tripod to go grab this photo. As I was walking over to the spot, a few clouds had moved in, but they moved away just in time for me to arrive and get some good shadows along with the warm light.

I'm very happy with this photo, and I'm hoping that the voters will be just as happy with it.

Post Processing:
* Topaz detail to bring out the medium and high details (but not small as it looked over-sharpened). Also adjust the tones to bring out more of the deep oranges.
* Topaz adjust to mainly bring out a lot of color. In my eyes, I see a lot of color in this scene, but in camera it feels washed out. So Topaz Adjust helped make this more how I saw it.
* In Aperture:
** Brought brightness up slightly
** Increased definition
** Decreased vibrancy to take out some of the blue cast that Topaz Adjust added in, especially in the pavement
** Brushed a curve into the bottom half and the shadows of the rest. This curve only reduced blue
** Brushed a curve into the highlights of the shy. This curve increased blues.
** Added a s-curve for the entire photo to increase contrast slightly.
** Brought the white point of the levels in a bit to brighten the photo
** Export
* Resized and saved to 300KB in Graphic Converter

Statistics
Place: 243 out of 264
Avg (all users): 4.7434
Avg (commenters): 5.0000
Avg (participants): 4.6806
Avg (non-participants): 4.8537
Views since voting: 634
Views during voting: 189
Votes: 113
Comments: 1
Favorites: 0


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AuthorThread
 Comments Made During the Challenge
12/01/2010 08:08:02 AM
Nice colours, lighting curvature of the path. Overall it’s not that interesting to me and the sign is out of place and distracting.
  Photographer found comment helpful.


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