I am guessing I may get a few DNMC votes on this because of the shadows. This photo was taken at 11:30 am, so it definitely falls into mid-day. In this part of the world, we still have decent shadows at this time, although the sun light is still harsh. Plus, the trees bend over the path, so even with a direct overhead sun there will be shadows visible.
I had actually taken a very similar photograph (same location) back in July. At that time the leaves were still green, and caused the path to be much darker. I ran that photo through topaz, and while not getting as good of end results, it still looks pretty cool (I actually like that photo much more than this one).
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This is my first entry using my newly purchased Topaz Adjust and Detail plugins. I played around with a few photos that I had previously entered in DPC challenges, and came out with some nice updates. I figured this scene would be perfect for this tool, and it was. Detail made sure the branches and leaves were crisp, especially in the sky. And Adjust made sure the colors really popped.
Post Processing:
* Topaz Detail to bring medium and large details, but reduce small details (to make sure the photo doesn't look over-sharpened with all these branches and leaves). Also made some tone adjustments
* Topaz Adjust to even out the exposure, decrease the highlights, and bring up the saturation
* Cropped
* Decreased exposure and black point
* Increased saturation a bit more
* Increase highlights a bit
* Levels
* Export for web
Statistics
Place: 57 out of 94 Avg (all users): 5.3616 Avg (commenters): 0.0000 Avg (participants): 5.2308 Avg (non-participants): 5.3986 Views since voting: 742 Views during voting: 289 Votes: 177 Comments: 0 Favorites: 0
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