I was in the mood to play with the post-processing a bit today, and this small farm tucked along busy Route 7 provided the perfect opportunity. This section of Smithfield continues to develop rapidly, and it provides a tiny rural oasis between the business district only 1/2 mile north and the 3-mile long business thoroughfare that is Mineral Spring Avenue just to the south. The farm is a throwback to when Smithfield was the largest land area in the state and was comprised almost entirely of rural farmland. The tiny pony in the foreground and the two overly curious horses along the fence share the pasture with a handful of cows that prefer to graze right next to the busy highway.
Post processing started with a brown filter in Topaz Adjust's "toned collection." I want to really mute the colors to give the photo a faded, aged, desaturated look, and that brown filter felt perfect. I then adjusted adaptive exposure, contrast, protect highlights, details, saturation, saturation boost, adaptive saturation, and color regions. A levels adjustment, a sepia photo filter, and a grain texture were all added in PSE. The framing was also created manually in PSE.
