When I started the Photo a Day challenge this year, I had two primary goals in mind. The first goal is to continuously improve photo composition skills. There's no end to the improvement needed in composition, and the skill is only maintained through constant practice. The second goal is to significantly improve my post-processing photo editing techniques. For that reason, most of the shots that appear in this gallery this year will be significantly post-processed. The only way to improve that skill is to practice it and to experiment on a number of different techniques. Today's photo is no exception.
When I went looking for a shot today, I had texture overlays in mind. I wanted a shot that would work well with a superimposed texture, since using texture overlays is a new skill for me and I really need to work with it. The shot you see here is not the shot I had in mind, but when I spotted this horse and stable I just had to take it. That's a third lesson to be learned in photography. Always take the shot when it appears since you may never get a second chance at it.
Having taken this shot, I went through the textures at my disposal. What I wanted was the appearance of a painting on a rough surface, like a piece of slate as an example. The selected texture, therefore, is of a raised surface. It's a bright blue texture, though, so I linked a hue adjustment to that layer and toned it down significantly. The blend mode is Hard Light since I really wanted the texture itself to stand out. Several levels and hue/saturation adjustments were added. I also used two photo filters at various stages - one a light warming filter, and the other a deep yellow. I needed to counterbalance the blue effect of the texture, and those two in combination seemed to do the trick.
