Rescue the Boring

Recently I spent an evening photographing the Wittenberg Grange Hall north of Newton, Iowa. The above photograph was taken with the Olympus E-1 and processed straight with no modification in RawShooter. (click on image to see a larger version).

Unfortunately, the image doesn't do anything for me. The dynamic range was very extreme and attempts to compress it would probably result in a muddy image. I was playing around with the highlight contrast and fill light adjustment when I saw something unique happening. Ah, time to have a little fun.


One thing that suprised me was the extensive amount of detail hidden in the shadows. The detail in the weatherboarding is there and even the bricks are visible. To achieve this image, I moved the Fill Light to +100, Highlight Contrast to -100, Saturation to +80, Exposure Compensation to +.70, Shadow Contrast to +30, and some minor adjustments to the white-balance and tint.

This isn't a perfect image, but it does illustrate what you can do with an editor to breathe new life into an image destined to be deleted.