On an early-morning trip to Eklutna this fall I made a detour to Arctic Valley. This caught my eye as I was driving through the woods -- Alaska certainly has one of the most colorful falls I've ever seen. A black and white version of this photo follows.
This photo presents somewhat of a moral dillema for me. I've always prided myself on only using image-editing software to do basic touch-ups such as dodging, contrast work, dust removal, etc. Only once have I strayed from that rule when posting a picture here (loner near Haystack Rock), and I removed an entire person from that picture. Here though, I've taken what would have been a very flat black and white (due to the similarity between the leaf and the tree trunk) and I used the hue/saturation adjustment tool to reduce the lightness of the yellows and then desaturated the whole image. This makes the leaf stand out much, much better, but.... is it cheating? I just don't know.
