St3v3M Loc: 35,000 feet

From the post My Image - Your Look: Let's Experiment With Editing we challenged you with The Rainbow Factory (With Dam Birds) and made some wonderful edits.

Now it's your turn to vote! Before you do though, look at the original and decide what works best for it from the images below.
- The Rainbow Factory (With Dam Birds)

Cast your vote here until midnight, Saturday ET. We'll post the winner soon after and let them decide what goes next! S-

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Tough this week! I'm going to have go with my own, I guess

#2

R.G. Loc: Scotland

#5. It emphasises the mixture of shadows and beams of light.

NJFrank Loc: New Jersey

Well after changing my mind way too many times I am going with #6

ejrmaine Loc: South Carolina

I choose #7

Billyspad Loc: The Philippines

No 3 cos it shows a bit of original thought rather than a few tugs on the the contrast sliders etc

ozdude Loc: Brisbane Australia

I know my vote doesn't count but I like 5! The light beam is spectacular.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

You don't have to be a participant in order to vote.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

I also like 5. I like the beam of light.

randomeyes Loc: wilds of b.c. canada

No.5

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

#5. Lots of nice ones but this one seems to fit my obsession with light beams

St3v3M Loc: 35,000 feet

Great job everyone, and thank you! This week's winner is Dave Chinn with 5 votes!

Now it's time to pass the torch and find out how it was done with more to follow.

Thank you again!!! S-

Original


Winner

(Download)

Dave Chinn

Thanks to all for participating and the votes. However, there were some excellent images, and while I am embarrassed to say .... I forgot all about this and didn't cast a vote. Sorry, but I do appreciate the votes, and also, a thank you to minniev for choosing this image for us to play around with. It was a lot of fun, and while it does give me a better understanding why she has such a great interest in her dam birds.

How this was done? I saw this had a slight ray of light coming from two different directions and I wanted to enhance the direction of lighting a little bit more. The process entailed about 30 layers of dodging and burning. While there were a couple of gradient layers with reduced opacity to help enhance the direction of lighting. I ran it through Nik Color Efex Pro 4 using the bleach bypass filter while being cautious of the contrast and local contrast, because if gone too far, halos begin to show around the edges of certain subjects. Hope this is understandable and maybe some will benefit this as a learning experience. Thanks again !!!
Dave

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

Congrats Dave, you worked this image in the spirit of the whole dam bird collection. Thanks for sharing your workflow on it, this adds knowledge for me, definitely. The dam has many strange lighting effects because the overhead grates that direct water flow let in light as well, and contort it all kinds of ways. Finding those light shards and shaping them is a lot of what I do, too. I appreciate your sharing and look forward to your challenge for the next MIYL installment!