AB Friday – One Photo Focus – May

The first Friday of the month (Saturday for me) means that it’s AB Friday, One Photo Focus hosted by Stacy.

I missed April’s One Photo Focus, so I’m happy to be back again. This month we are editing an image taken by Shane Francescut of The Weekly Minute. I enjoy Shane’s work very much!

When seeing this image for the first time, I thought there were many possibilities and it appealed to me, very much! I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone has done too.

This was my first interpretation of Shane’s image, giving it a kind of 1950s or 60s look – I think? I love the light and shade… and the composition!

But I wanted more, so I had another try.  I was hoping to make it pop! I added a gradient to the sky and surprisingly it’s orange (see below) 😛  For me, this gave the image a harmonious feel.

I like the way it makes the domed roof shine.

This is my finished image for OPF May.

Final image for May’s One Photo Focus.

These are the steps I took to arrive at this result:

Camera Raw – adjusted Temperature, Levels and Clarity. Raised Exposure (to 1.00) and Contrast slightly. Changed Blue, Cyan and Red either in Hues or Saturation.

Open in PS – Add Curves Contrast to lighten. Adjusted Levels, Cropped and Straightened image slightly and did a bit of Burning in the shadows.

I wanted to bring the sky in more as I’d lost some of the blue – I tried gradients here, but didn’t achieve anything I liked, so I hopped into CEP4 and added the orange gradient. I didn’t know I was going to do that 😉

Back out to PS and masked out some of the gradient, where it was too heavy.  That’s it!

Here is Shane’s original unedited RAW image.

I do enjoy working on someone else’s image and knowing that there are others working on the same image too – it’s fun and worth the wait – You can view them all on Stacy’s blog at Visual Venturing.

I hope the link will be correct (I am scheduling before Stacy’s post). If not for some reason, click here 😀

..and many thanks to Stacy for hosting this fun!