Since I didn’t have an opportunity to shoot a 365 project image today, I went back through some older RAW images looking for some unprocessed gems and found this 2013 shot of the Swiss Lanes bowling alley in New Glarus, Wisconsin. Situated in south central Wisconsin, New Glarus – named after the canton of Glarus in east central Switzerland – is a quaint little village with a definite Swiss-European feel to it. It also sits on one of the many bike trails that criss-cross the state. Oh, it’s also home to one of the best breweries in Wisconsin (and the country!) – the New Glarus Brewing Company. If you’re ever in the area, you must take the brewery tour and partake of the samples. 🙂
Anyway back to the image: the Swiss Lanes bowling alley sits on Highway 69 just south of the village center. I loved the iconic neon sign and how the blue barreled roof mirrored the bright blue partly cloudy sky. In processing, I wanted to place the “horizon” – in this case, the roof line of the building – at the very bottom of the vertical frame, breaking the “The Rule of Thirds” composition guidelines completely. Yes, there are lots of “rules” about composition in photography, but once you know them and know why they work, then you can start to break them!
After some color correction, a bit of warp to straighten the roof and the sign, I ran the image through some custom presets in Topaz Impression to add the final painted look.
Day 194 of my 365 photo a day project.
