Back in 2012 we were at Lake Tahoe and I saw this tree. I photographed it knowing that how it actually looked wasn't all that wonderful, but that maybe I could do something with it later to make it different.
So here you see the tree, a pine, silhouetted against the lake. The background consists primarily of horizontal elements, from bottom to top, sunlit sand, heavy shadow, very bright sand, shades of blue, and then the mountains on the other side.
The strong vertical silhouette of the tree is what connects all that horizontality, holds everything together.
Three years later, I finally figure out what I want to do with this tree. I used a variety of Photoshop artistic filters as well as some painterly effects in Topaz and came up with this version.
The tree is now much lighter and brighter and looks fluffier than before. I like how a texture I used turned the horizontal stripes of the background into softer elements and changed the colors to shades of robin's egg blue and grey. And it's kind of cool how at the very bottom, that bit of sunlit sand now almost looks like another strip of water.
Done. Shipped off to Fine Art America. We'll see if someone would love to have it on their wall.
And now I shall resume rummaging around my photographs, seeing if, with the skills I have today, I can change something else I photographed years ago.
©Carol Leigh
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