Just A Little Silliness

It's sunflower season around here and the farms are having "sunflower weekends".  We've been to a couple lately.  One over at Buttonwood Farms in Griswold, CT and the other at Lyman Orchards in Middlefield, CT.  One of the really nice things about both events is that the proceeds from the weekends go to charity.  Buttonwood's goes to Sunflowers For Wishes and Lyman's to the Connecticut Children's Medical Center Pediatric Cancer Unit.  Today's image is from the Lyman Orchard event.  It was sort of an overcast day with little pockets of blue dotting the mottled sky.  I came across the subject of today's image and it just reminded me of a spikey haired body builder in mid pose.  It's just a fun image, but I couldn't leave well enough alone.  It's not HDR, but to find out what it is, hit the "Read More"

Most of the work on today's image was done in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (LR).  It was over Sharpened and given way too much Clarity using the Adjustment Brush to bump up the grittiness.

It then took a trip over to Adobe Photoshop CC (PS) it get even more definition using two Curves Adjustment Layers.  One with the curve brought to a hyper brightness range.  (About one quarter in from the right brought up about 90% up to the top of the curve.)  and the other brought to a very low shadow depth.  (About one quarter in from the left brought down about 90% to the bottom of the curve.)  Both masks were inverted (CTRL I [eye]) to hide the effects.

Every highlight and every shadow was then traced using a white Brush (B) set to about 10 pixels width and ninety five percent hardness.  Once drawn, both Masks were Blurred until the only thing left was the enhanced brightness or darkness.  (about twenty to thirty percent)  Flipping on and off the Layer (clicking on and off the eyeball to the left of the Layer Thumbnail) shows the changes.  Too much, reduce the Blur.  Too little, increase the Blur.

It was just an exercise in being a little silly with an image.