Dudley Farm in the fog

[Cheryl Slechta]

The morning I went to Dudley Farms State Park last week it was early and foggy. I started out with a slight Orton effect, then Nik Silver Efex and changed the toning to Selenium, then Nik Color Efex Sunlight. Originally, I used Fractalius Impression I blended with Luminosity and I got a slight halo. I ran out of time so I decided to redo the image today after uploading a Fractalius upgrade. And guess what, no Impression anymore but several different styles and more sliders. Anyway, I figured out that Crayon Soft got me to the same place with no halos. The new version even has a noise slider. I blended with Luminosity.
Thanks for looking. Comments and suggestions appreciated.:S3:

[Dennis Bishop]

Very nice, Cheryl. I like this very much. The sense of depth (from probably both the change in tone and the perspective) is wonderful, and the selenium finish was a good choice with the fog.

I approached the new version of Fractalius very carefully and recorded the numbers for the presets I'd saved. It was good to find out that I didn't have to re-enter them. The new sliders are good, and I didn't mind losing some of the canned presets because I don't use them, anyway. However, folks who do might want to copy the settings before installing the new version so they can be entered and saved.

[Hazel Grant]

Nice effect. Fun, working with different settings isn't it. sometimes it just jumps up and surprises you. That tree in the upper left that sticks a couple branches out of the evergreen could maybe be blurred back a bit so it doesn't fight with the windmill for attention. Nice fog effect. Maybe someday I'll wake up early enough for fog....:)

[Maureen Allen]

Lovely processing, Cheryl :S3:

[Anita Bower]

Nice farm scene, with the fence, the entrance, the trees, barns, windmill. I don't work in B&W, so I hesitate to comment, but, I wonder if a little more contrast might be in order.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . I don't work in B&W, so I hesitate to comment, but, I wonder if a little more contrast might be in order.

To me, there's something mysterious, yet serene, in a foggy landscape. The barely visible background draws me in. There should be higher contrast in the foreground than in the background, and that's what I see, here. I think adding contrast -- at least to the image as a whole -- would compromise the feeling Cheryl captured so well. I like it as is, but, if I were going to do something, I might further lower the contrast in the background. I suppose one might argue that the result would be a relative increase in contrast between the foreground and background, but it would've been achieved by reducing contrast locally, and the overall feel would be one of low contrast.

The floor is open for rebuttal, comments, and alternate points of view . . .

[Cheryl Slechta]

Here's my first version of the image that I converted to B&W Infrared in Lightroom. It looks a little more like Dennis' last comment.