I just love serendipity. While working on my other projects I had the sinking feeling that my interest in the fictional Mystery on Trabuco Flats project was not going to go anywhere. So totally on the back burner. I thought that having some night photographs might add more to the mystery to my story, but one is not allowed in County parks after sunset, knowing that I probably could blur the rules at sunset, but I was trying to be a good boy-scout and obey their rules.
One alternative was to lean into black and white image where I could darkened the sky and provide the illusion that it was dark, such as my version below. Nevertheless, I was intrigued in how to accomplish what I wanted in color.
Today while reading Lenscratch, the artist/photographer Meg Roussos was featured for her Pseudo Night landscape portfolio. Cool! She was using an old movie Day-for-Night trick, creating nightscapes from scenes filmed during the day.
I found Roussos photographs to be very inspirational. So I quickly altered one of the photographs that I had been considering for my project, above. It’s a combination of altering the color temperature towards blue, then add more contrast with a Curves layer and then adding an Exposure layer. I reduced the image exposure about two stops, which actually is the first time I think that I have ever used this Photoshop layer as I usually default to a Curves layer. hmmmm. I may have to investigate this Day-for-Night process some more.
This image is probably not a final photograph, but a working version that I wanted to post to see what it looks like. So far, I think it provides some potential worth exploring later when I come back to this project again. And inspiration to think about developing my story line a little bit further.
It’s nice when a project comes back to life.
Cheers!
Featured photograph: Featured photograph, above: untitled (Mystery on Trabuco Flats), copyright 2019 Douglas Stockdale
2020 Workshop: Developing a Creative Book workshop with Medium Photo, March, 19-22, 2020, a four-day extended weekend workshop in San Diego (workshop registration is now open and some seating is still available…sold out in 2019…just saying…)
Singular Images 
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