Two Old Timers

[bunadski]

These two old mangrove trees are a familiar sight in our place since they are just along the highway. I just thought of making them more timeless (hopefully)...


Weathered Duo by bunadski, on Flickr

Critiques please? thanks!

 

[dalex100]

The picture is a little bit too grey. What did you do to the picture?

 

[PlanetStarbucks]

Nice, I like the duality of contrasts. The heavy visual contrast between light and dark and the more subtle contrast of saturation and desaturation. If I may take a guess at the processing...pushed highlight saturation and pulled back midtone and shadow saturation?

 

[bunadski]

The picture is a little bit too grey. What did you do to the picture?

On the original shot, the foreground and trees exposure is more or less the same as that on the posted pic, but the sky was quiet bright since I did not use a GND filter. On PP, what I did was:

1. In LR, I boosted overall contrast by lowering the DARKS slider and increasing the LIGHTS slider a bit.
2. Exported to PS, placed a CURVES adjustment layer to further boost the sky colors, and masked out the adjustment layer to exclude both the trees and the foreground. I also increased sharpness in here.
3. Exported image back to LR, where I increased overall saturation.
4. Played a bit with TEMPERATURE and HUE sliders.

I think the predominant gray color is due to the sand color, which is pale gray. even the rocks there are gray as they are also coated with the pale gray sand.

Nice, I like the duality of contrasts. The heavy visual contrast between light and dark and the more subtle contrast of saturation and desaturation. If I may take a guess at the processing...pushed highlight saturation and pulled back midtone and shadow saturation?

Thanks! I detailed my PP above.