I've featured this drawbridge in several other photos over the last couple of years, so I won't go into the history of it yet again. Today I finally found a spot where I could photograph it from this side, however, so it was worth posting again. Of course, getting to this location did involve ignoring a few signs, like "Danger, High Voltage" and "Electrocution Hazard" but hey, it was all in the name of art! I wanted to try something a bit different in the processing, so I played around a bit with an aging technique I found in my Topaz plug-ins. Since the bridge has been in that position for at least 50 years, the aging of the photo did seem appropriate.
Post processing started with an aged effect filter in Topaz B&W FX. I then adjusted color sensitivity sliders, none of which effected the sepia, surprisingly enough. I also adjusted adaptive exposure, contrast, boost black, and boost white. A levels adjustment was added in PSE. I then added the off-white border taking a color sample from the brightest part of the image, and applied a crackle filter to produce the cracked texture.
