It's been snowing heavily all morning, so I wanted a photo that would capture that effect. To be clear, the snow falling in this image is real, and is not an effect added in post processing.
An empty, snow covered, memorial bench is most fitting today. I'll add to the memorial and dedicate this photo to my Uncle Al who passed away at 7:15 this morning. He loved the outdoors and would have felt right at home in this setting (without the snow. He hated snow.)
Post processing involved drawing out the full contrast and colors. The original, as you can imagine, is very muted and flat. I ran this through Redynamix, and that really pulled the colors and contrast out. Several levels adjustments were added, and the saturation was pushed just a hair. I added a cooling filter, but then tied a levels adjustment to the filter layer and toned it down quite a bit. (I wanted white snow, not blue.) No sharpening was done on the image since I didn't want the snowflakes to overtake the image.
