| Actual Image
Autumn Has Come to Australia (38)
JPlumb
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 828 W: 203 N: 1011]](http://i1.trekearth.com/misc/g-g-g.gif) (3123) | First, let me say thank you to Santo (Skippy007), for properly identifying this tree for me.
This is a view of Megalong St. in Leura, which is a small town in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. With fall, the leaves turn colour and drop to the ground. At least that’s what I was used to, growing up in Canada. That’s not always the case here with the Eucalyptus trees. Most of these trees keep their leaves, and may drop their bark. This scene is closer to what I am used to however, so this is what caught my eye for the shot.
The trees on this street almost look like Maple Trees (check out the leaf in the bottom left corner), but they’re not, and they are not Eucalyptus. They are a Plane Tree (or Sycamore) (Platanus sp.) which are an introduced and widely planted deciduous tree. It is fast growing and drought tolerant and tolerates pollution, neglect and poor soils, while providing plenty of summer shade. Most of the southern Australian cities have avenues of Plane Trees.
Leura is a popular town in the Blue Mountains, it is known for its gardens and the Leura Mall (please see workshop), which is a collection of small stores found through the centre of town. It is a nice place to spend an afternoon. You won’t necessarily find any bargains, but there are some unique selections that might be found here.
Leura also has the Leura Park with the Leura Cascades which I have visited before, seen here and here.
Some of this from: http://www.bluemts.com.au/tourist/towns/leura.asp and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platanus and
http://www.dermcare.com.au/allergens/platanus_spp.htm
I took several shots of this sidewalk before I got what I wanted. The first couple had cars in them, so I did a position change. Then I had people to contend with. Finally, just as I was about to take this a couple of guys went walking by. I waited until they were towards the end of the block and took the shot before others came into the scene. I took another couple without any people after, but came back to this one. The two guys gave it more depth.
Workflow for this shot was as follows:
Shot taken in Raw with JPG reference – (ISO 200 44mm @f/8, 1/60)
NEF files adjusted for exposure, shadow, vignetting, brightness and contrast
Levels – not used
Curves – S-curve for contrast
Added saturation layer +30 to master, +5 to red, +5 to green (see note on save)
Saved as a tiff
Cropped for position, resized, selected on sky and selectively reduced noise, inversed the selection, added a layer for sharpening with USM, modified sharpening with a layer mask (50% opacity black brush), framed and saved for web – on the save for web, with the detail in this shot I had to save at 63% @ 197.8K (very disappointed) – I also noticed a significant colour shift (loss). I went back to the copy and had a look at “view - proof colors”, which showed this shift – based on this finding I went back to the saturation layer and upped it to what you see now, to give me what I first expected. |
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