It's All About The Light

I watched a short video today where a photographer reminded me that our images are never about the subject of our image but about the light itself. I went out looking at things tonight with that thought bouncing around in my head and I came home with some beautifully lit images. How much of it was the early autumn light and how much of it was my thinking about the LIGHT being my main subject I'm not sure - but something worked!

I converted the raw file in ACR and then imported it into Photoshop. I ran an Orton Effect action and then an ethereal glow action over the top of that, masking it from the tree and leaves in the foreground and leaving it to further diffuse the light and leaves in the background. I finished it with a green frame, blurring it and dropping the opacity way down so it would barely be visible.

Here comes autumn!!!

Could be my new favorite you have posted Jules Incredible feel !!!

Very lovely treatment, Julie. I am always attracted to these red vines on tree trunks. You've rendered a nice version!

Very well done Julie,
And you are right...Its always about the light...:) This has a wholesome natural glow to it...Love it...congrats...:cool:

Orton worked perfectly for this images, soft light and colors make it very appealing.

Jules: Just beautiful. Where did you find those actions....I am just learning about using them.

This is a lovely image and it displays the quality of the light very well.

Joanna, I get most of my free actions from www.atncentral.com. They have a huge assortment of free stuff and they explain how to download them and how to import them into Photoshop. You do need CS3 for most of them to work but there are some there for PS Elements as well.

The rest I find on photoblogs around the web and then I've actually bought a few from www.ezactions.com. They have them a la carte for $3-15 each and a few of them I've used countless times so it was totally worth the investment.

Julie, that is really nice... eye appealing!