Thank you.

[Dennis Bishop]

An unexpected delight connected with the hotel room we occupied during a short stay in Rancho Cordova, California, was a sweet gum tree in Autumn color right outside the window. I photographed the leaves on the tree, on the grass, and on the parking lot.

Nikon Coolpix P7000, ISO 100, f/5.6, five-exposure HDR at 1 EV increments, 8.1mm (35mm film equivalent is 38mm)

processing highlights

• Topaz Simplify -- saved watercolor preset
• Alien Skin Snap Art -- saved watercolor wash preset, Hard Light blend mode, 37% opacity
• layer filled with RGB 225/225/225 (OOTB background color)
• new layer from the Simplify and Snap Art layers -- warped and masked
• Joel Olives texture over blue field -- Linear Dodge, 56%, skewed and masked
• Photo Filter adjustment layer -- Warming 85, masked
• Fractalius -- three saved black & white layers, Multiply, various opacities, masked
• Snap Art -- saved black & white Line Art preset, Multiply, 30%, masked
• Simplify -- saved black & white edges preset, Multiply, 45%, masked

[Paul Lagasi]

I am a little confused here...Where's the tree? An interesting composition for sure, like how the wheelchair person is holding the leaves like a bouquet. TFS.

[Diane Miller]

Way too cool!!!

[Kerry Perkins]

I like this a lot Dennis, nice eye and creativity. I'm rather fond of these parking places because that's where I park these days. Super job with the processing.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

It looks like this was photographed in the parking lot and a block added at the bottom for the perspective creating a block? A little cryptic for me too. I will be interested and hope you post your interpretation for us.

[Dennis Bishop]

It looks like this was photographed in the parking lot and a block added at the bottom for the perspective creating a block? A little cryptic for me too. I will be interested and hope you post your interpretation for us.

The best I can do is to relate the sequence of events that ended with this image. The handicapped parking space was between the sweet gum tree I'd been shooting off and on for however many days and one that was near the other end of the parking lot. While walking toward the second one, I passed the parking space and saw some leaves in it. That, somehow, triggered the idea of rearranging some of the leaves and shooting it. At that point, I think I'd thought about masking away the unpainted part of the space and putting one or more textures behind what remained.

Sometime between then and when I started processing the image, I decided to go a different direction. I'd been wanting to do a non-rectangular image, and this seemed like a good candidate. The photo shown, here, is the untouched one from the middle of the HDR sequence. I probably should've added canvas to both sides so the angled lines could've extended all the way to the bottom of the image, but that didn't occur to me until I read your comment. That would've been easy. Another possibility would've been to reduce the widths of the angled sides, but I probably wouldn't have done that even if I'd thought of it.

I did two versions of this, one with the OOTB background and one with a black one to work with my monitors, where my images cycle randomly to serve as desktop graphics. (Actually, it's a single file with the backgrounds on adjacent layers.) Because the bottom part of the image is so dark, it works better with the black background than the light OOTB one.

[gary ellwein]

Dennis, this image is most creative. Well done seeing the possibility in something so common. I particularly like the way the image fades away at the top

[Cheryl Slechta]

Dennis, a very simple and moving image. Well seen and rendered

[Anita Bower]

The leaves in the hands of the wheelchair person made me smile. Perfect touch. Beautiful colors, textures, placement of leaves. I like how you squared off the lower part. Not so fond of the upper part vanishing into lightness.

[Mitch Carucci]

I really like what you did here. You brightened up a symbol that we see every day and one that need not be viewed darkly. I am not expressing it well, but perhaps you see what I mean. Nice work as usual.