Outside The Box

I was organizing my documents folder the other night when I ran across a file called "General Goals For 2012." It was a little late to do any planning based on the list but it might provide some amusement so I began to scan down the page...

1. Shoot more often......OK, that is pretty vague but CHECK.

2. Post 3 times a week to social media sites.....I did pretty good on that so CHECK.

3. Concentrate on creating images by using strong compositions rather than relying on amazing light....Feel very good about that one so CHECK.

4. Get out more in bad weather to create strong images....Very happy with that so CHECK.

4. Do not let photography interfere with family life and be the best father and supporting husband I can be.....Well it's probably a good thing I'm rating myself on that one so....CHECK

5. Shoot different subjects instead of landscape....I shot some skylines and stuff so CHECK.

6. Step outside the box and create interesting computed enhanced images.......oh.....well.....crap...

At least I knew what I was going to do that evening....

This photo file had been sitting on my hard drive since early spring. I always liked the composition but could never quite get the processing to look the way I wanted to. It always had a funny color cast in the shadows or the sky looked off...a perfect image to change into something else.

Since I didn't quite know where to get started, I used a preset in Adobe Lightroom call EFF Dragon 5 created by Sean McCormack. That got me into the ballpark, and a few more adjustments finished off the image. If you follow my photography, you know this is way outside the box for me. What do you think?

P.S. Yes it's only a single image but I'm putting a little tiny CHECK after number 6 now :)