I went out with Lonnie for a walk in Watson Woods in order to take photos for an assignment for my photo group. The fall colors were beautiful- just what I was looking for in my image. I’ve been limiting my computer (and iPhone) time due to symptoms in my arm, elbow, and shoulder from overuse, so I decided to limit my editing time to 10-20 minute blocks, rather than my usual several hours to several days per image (that combined with genealogy is what caused this problem in the first place). I did a lot in Lightroom, including using my Camera Vivid preset (thank you, Carol!), so that it was already quite saturated when I went to Photoshop. The edits I did after that seemed to increase the saturation even more, so then I applied an inverted image layer at low opacity (thanks to what I’ve learned in my photo group and to Blake Rudis, who developed this color correction process) to take out some of the yellows and oranges. When I brought it brought it back into Lightroom, I wondered what it would look like in black and white- and I found I liked that version even better! I think I must have been inspired by my friend, Carol again, who also turned a fall color photo to black and white. Rule breakers!
I took the photo to begin with because the girl reminded me of Caitlin, my daughter. And now in black and white it seems to have a spooky feeling- which makes me think of Stranger Things, which we have been binge-watching on Netflix. Scary!
melinda anderson photography 