Sometimes I will get so enthralled in what I’m doing I’ll lose track of time. This is the product of one such (very late) night. The original file is quite boring: very grey, lacking of contrast. It wasn’t until after I processed it that I really even noticed the streaks of rain.

The ground and bales required the most work. Four curves adjustment layers were needed to bring the dark bales into relative balance with the sky. The hardest thing was to fine tune the layer masks so that the bales didn’t have a conspicuous dark halo. All the extraneous pieces of hay sticking out of the bales drove me nuts!

This particular night I stumbled across a technique that I quite like. It involves the B&W adjustment layer (though you could use any method that makes a B&W layer: desaturation, channel mixer, etc.). I either overlay (read: Blending = “Overlay”) a color version of the photo on top of the B&W layer (as in this case) or change the blending mode of the the B&W layer itself to “Overlay.” This makes the darks VERY dark, necessitating the addition of even more curves adjustment layers. [I'll discuss this technique in a separate post.]

A lot of work? Yes, but I love the result.