A couple of weeks ago I was over in Creede, Colorado visiting my best friend and his wife. As I was driving toward Creede from Southfork, Colorado along the Rio Grande River, I noticed these old railroad cars off to the south side of the highway.

These old cars had probably been around the Creede area since at least the early 1900s. I thought that they might make a really cool photo, especially if I took the shot in the morning to make sure the light was right as the mountains are generally to the west of the view that I wanted.

A fellow WordPress friend of mine, Leanne Cole had turned me on to some new (for me) photo editing software called On1 Photo Raw Max. I had been experimenting with it a bit and thought I might make use of it to help the railroad car photo.

One of the inevitable problems we photographers face, especially if we are traveling and only in one location for a short time is weather and skies. That morning the sky was as clear as it could be – not even one little tiny cloud in sight.

Now this sometimes makes for a rather boring photograph. Even after I converted the photo to black and white as this was my original vision, the photo was just not what I wanted. So I imported the photo into On1 Photo Raw Max, and used the sky tool to bring in some clouds for more visual interest. I also used On1 to bump up the vibrance a bit.

So, here is my finished product.

I brought the photo into On1 as a color image; changed the sky and increased the vibrance a bit. Then I saved that file, and opened it again in Elements. That’s where I made the final black and white conversion as well as tweaking up the contrast a bit for the monochrome.

This image is really becoming one of my monochrome favorites, and I really hope you like it too.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog. Have fun out there; Mother Nature is a great healer for our souls.