In November of 2011 there was an engagement party for Mrs. Jeffsetter and me in the Roanoke area of Virginia. We chose to fly into DCA airport and then drive to our destination on the Blue Ridge parkway. It was such a beautiful drive that I couldn’t help but get out of the car and take photos every 10 minutes along the way.
For those of you who have never been, the Blue Ridge Parkway is simply an amazing drive through the heart of eastern America. While it is beautiful year round, it is especially magnificent in the fall when the leaves change colors.
Today’s photo was taken during that fall drive and features some of my attempts to get better at post processing photos.
The photo was taken on my Canon Powershot G12 camera and didn’t always look so vibrant.
In fact, the original photo barely drew upon the natural colors that I saw that day. Here is what the photo looked like coming out of the camera:
As you can see, I brought up the level of red significantly on the photo and then applied a faux-HDR effect on the image to get it to look this way (almost like an Instagram photo). I really like the way it turned out, even if it is embellishing the original colors of the photo. Here is how the photo looked without applying the HDR effect and just bringing up the color levels in Aperture:
As you can see, each adjustment makes the photo have a more striking appearance to the eye, but also gets further away from what my camera actually saw that day.
Which photo do you like the best?