I call this image “Moonrise on the Water” for obvious reasons. However, what you may not realize, is this image started out as a colorful sunset over a small stream in the Kettle Moraine State Forest in southeast Wisconsin. Really? Yep. Really. I was intrigued with the RAW file enough to play around with it, but the color in the sky was just not interesting enough, the reeds along the stream were moving in the wind a little too much, and the stream lacked detail and color. So what to do?
On a whim, I used the motion blur filter in Photoshop with the angle set at 0 and the amount at 2000 pixels. Now we’re getting somewhere! The image was certainly more interesting and quite abstract now. I didn’t want to lose the silhouettes of the trees and reeds, so I painted those back in using a layer mask and a very soft brush. Hmmm, interesting, but still not doing it for me.
How about a pass through Topaz Impression? (Actually, it was 3 passes) Ooooo, yeah. Getting warmer! What is it missing? The color was nice, but I really liked the contrast of the bright horizon and the darkness of the trees and grass. So, remove the color. Yes! Almost there. The final touch was a color lookup adjustment layer set to “Crisp_Winter” to add the blue tone. Bingo! Now it looks like a moonrise over the water.
Day 211 of my 365 photo a day project.
This is what I started with:
