What I Am Working On: Method and Madness

I write a lot about how I edit my photos. I also write quite a bit about how I have a method for discarding files. Today’s post is about the exception to my usual approach.  At the time I am writing this, I have sorted through, edited, and discarded files through early July 2018. The exception is my trip to Tanzania. I was there in December 2017 and I still have almost all of my files from that trip. That trip was one I wasn’t sure if I would ever really have the opportunity to make and it meant a lot to me to be able to go. I have a lot of files that are still not edited, but this week I picked this one to work on:

ISO 1000 75mm f/16 1/640 sec

These young elephants were just off the road, seemingly content to munch away and ignore us. When it came to the edit, I wanted to express the serenity of this moment. Here is the edit:

ISO 1000 75mm f/16 1/640 sec

I started with a crop. From there, I created another layer to work on just the sky, as that was probably the element I was least pleased with in the original file. I recently posted about a new method I have been using to create a sky, so the details for that can be found here. My other edit was to use the Orton filter within Luminar to create the slight jewel-like glow in the final edit, to replace the harsher tones of the original file.

What do you think of these edits? Does this edit have a serene feel to it? Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Lens Artists Photo Challenge, Wild.

Picfair version is here.