Lady with Child in Central Park

Originally, I only wanted to capture an image of the bridge in t his scene, but after I took the shot, I liked that the woman and child were there.

Maybe it's my subconscious that drives me to take the image, but the raw image itself was pretty boring and less than inspiring. After some consideration I could see something taking shape, though.

I immediately knew that the colors were bland and less than complimentary, so I converted it to black and white. Still , there was something missing, so I added a gradient Gaussian blur to bring a little focus and dreaminess to the image. I added the wet plate overlay as the final touch because I felt that this image lent itself to a nostalgic history.

It may seem counter intuitive to make new digital image look like a damaged old photo, but this image talks to me. I can hear a long and interesting story when I see it.