covered bridge
What says "New Hampshire" more than a covered bridge in autumn? Covered bridges were built back in the day to protect the actual roadway from snow and ice, or so I'm told. New Hampshire has more than 50 of these beautiful structures. Here's one, framed in fall foliage. The golden color in the oaks is gone, but I like the November orange-brown nearly as much.
There's a richness in this image that wasn't in the original, thanks to the overlay of a texture file. "Texturing" is not my usual style, but once in a while an image comes along that just seems to cry out for that boost of color and push toward surrealism that a texture can provide. That was the case here. I took the file into Photoshop and applied a light coating of textures (two, I think, but maybe just one). The foliage sprang to life as it returned to that rich orange brown. I eased the texture at the bridge to give it a little pop against the November colors. And there it was, the image I remembered seeing that morning.
Funny that it took so much Photoshop magic to bring that flat, dull image back to the colorful image I recalled seeing. My usual inclination is to make simple adjustments to the straight-out-of-camera image to bring it in line with what I saw when I was shooting. I don't care for over-the-top colors and such; I want my images to look natural. That said, maybe I do like a "natural-plus" appearance, like the athletes who give 110% every day. I want my images at 110% of what I saw.
That's the case here, anyway. The application of texture brought the image to where I wanted it, at 110% of reality.
