Making Lemonade

Today's post is about taking a "blah" image and making something (hopefully) worth viewing. As I'm not a photographer by profession, and travels seem fewer and far between than ever, I rarely have the luxury of staying in a particular location for several days waiting for conditions to be "right". When I'm at the location, I'll get what I get.

On a trip to the Netherlands (that seems like ages ago), I had a half day in the town of Zaanse Schans, a nice little place where windmills still operate. It was a hazy, cloudy, gray day. A cascade of windmills caught my eye as I approached the town. Had a short debate with myself whether to shoot or not. Took the shot. After typical dust retouches, a crop, and a slight rotation:

Meh. Save the red in the far left windmill, almost looks black and white straight out of the camera. About the only thing I liked in the shot is the windmill sequence. I shot 35mm those days, so quite a lot of grain and noise in the digital scan (probably not visible in the smaller JPGs on the blog here, but you can trust me :).

Rather than fight the grain, I decided to go for a vintage feel and accentuate the grain. Applied moderate definition to the entire image. Pushed on in that direction, adding a pretty harsh vignette really burning the corners. Finally, added a sepia tone. Liked the sepia effect - warmed the scene nicely.

Not the strongest image ever, but glad I took the shot.