Voila!

I'd promised some time ago to post the before and after stages of one of my pieces. Well, a recent session is now reproduced for your review. This particular piece was taken in South Hampton, New Hampshire, at a recent event given by Jewell Towne Vineyards, where Lisa was presenting her nuts and fudge to the visitors. Since I've had my share of nuts and fudge, I decided that a walk would be in order. This scene I lay before you was just down the block, though I had no idea it was there when I started off on my journey.
Photo 1 is the raw image that appeared to me in the upload to my computer. Now, as for photo 2, it appeared to me following 1 1/2 hours of toil and trouble. It's actually a third stage zoom; explanation, once I completed the original piece, I simply zoomed in bit by bit for a new perspective. As I grew to like one and/or the other stage view I would save it and/or them. At each stage I touched up a little here and a little there. Voila! Always a neat idea to create new perspectives with any one photo. You never know what you will find, or feel.
I do have a little more work to do on it before I send it up to my gallery. Sorry, no settings with be revealed. Those are family secrets.

 Photo 1

Photo 2

The Search Family of Shickshinny

Funny thing about this family plot just north of Shickshinny, Pennsylvania. It disappears during the summer months, swallowed whole by the surrounding undergrowth. I should have called it "The Guardian Growth." You literally cannot see it from Rte. 11 just the other side of the tall trees. This particular capture was taken in late fall.
I mentioned nearby Rte. 11. Well, I removed it along with a roadside railing. And I removed telephone poles with running wires, a white metal railing that enclosed the family plot, and a bench that sat near the second tree on the left. It was a challenge, to be sure, but I knew the result would be most satisfying. I should have been a surgeon. LOL!
I fell in love with the sway of the dark trees, the continuity of the background brush, and doesn't that white tree just POP!? The old stones are humbled by their sparsity and weary incline against the hibernating woodland thicket.
The Search Family of Shickshinny is a favorite with many. It also took a "Highly Commended" award in the recent '2014 USA Landscape Photographer of the Year' contest. One of the judges was famed photographer Art Wolfe. I'm proud of this one.

More to come from my gallery.