Local Pub Night

How to display today's photo proved as interesting as undertaking a night shot and what to do with it to contribute to the Filterama Challenge. I wanted to show with as much clarity as possible what I see as important difference between the original (underlay) and the finished product (the smaller overlay)

Still, time aside, I have learned a lot and now it remains to be seen how blippers view the finished product by way of contrast with what they can compare of it with the original.

I look forward to frank comment as blippers choose.

The original image is taken without using enhancement camera settings ('None')... the glow from the hotel, street lights and glare to the right from a car wash seemed sufficient for what I was aiming for.

I used the Picasa software by choosing a combination of functions, lightening the image a tiny amount with 'Fill Light', increasing the depth of the colour using a tiny degree of Saturation and I barely sharpened the quality of the image ... I next applied a Focal B&W treatment, the hotel being naturally my focus and expanded that downward from that centre so as to catch some colour from the street light sheen on the grass of the park and on the parked cars.

Finally, I brought viewpoint more immediately to the hotel & the foreground by cropping the image across the top to reduce the B&W expanse of the upper portion of the photo. That was mottled and grainy, distracting from the cosy image as I saw it with my eye that was entirely warm and particularly wanting to preserve the viewpoint of the scene as I saw it at distance.