Travel Theme: Deep (in the woods)

You never know what you might come across when you are out hiking.  In this case, I was deep in the woods.  The travel theme this week at Where’s My Backpack? is deep, so I figured I was in the right place.  Turns out, I was in the right spot for a little mystery:

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I’m not sure which question I had first; was it, why is there a stone building here? or which storm?, we get a lot of them and I was just curious to know which storm the sign was referring too.  I was at the Babler State Park in Missouri on a Monday so the visitor’s center was closed, so my questions will have to wait for another visit.  And I will be going back, it is a nice park with hiking, biking, and equestrian trails.

Here is my original photo:

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I don’t know about you, but when I first looked at it, I thought the color was just wrong to go with the theme of deep.  I wanted the richer orange color you see in the finished version.  To get the look I was going for, I opened the photo in camera raw, and in the basic settings I adjusted the temperature setting to be a bit warmer.  Then in Photoshop, I opened up a film plug-in and applied a Fuji Provia 100F filter.  I thought that the little bit of texture that the filter added helped with the deep theme.  I also sharpened it a bit.

What do you think?  Does the first one say “deep” to you more than the second?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Pathways

When I went on a hike I had the theme of pathways on my mind.  I took this hike at Castlewood State Park in Missouri.  It is a nice day use area, but if you are planning a visit, I would recommend you bring bug spray.  This hike was about 3 miles and featured quite a bit of elevation considering that it was in Missouri.  Here is part of the path; it looked like several paths in a lot of spots:

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If you did not look closely, you could lose the trail with markers like these:

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Parts of the are were not very friendly looking:

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And there was this little guy, making his own path:

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Cheers!