It’s set to be a record-breaking day temperature-wise here in the UK thanks to the climate emergency so it seems appropriate to find something cold to rework and post, and while it wasn’t terribly cold when the following photo was taken it does still have plenty of ice in it so it’s possible to imagine falling flat on your face and lying on the cold, cold surface.
This photo was taken in Reston, Virginia during the first trip my wife and I took to America, back in 2011. I like this photo because it’s got a few elements of interest for me: there are the kids already skating on the ice rink; there are the parents looking on and offering encouragement or silent prayers; there’s the kid on the left putting on his ice skates. Outdoor ice rinks are more common these days during the winter months in the UK but this still feels a quintessentially American scene. The architecture of the buildings in the background helps with their uniformity; their planned town appearance. And then there are the people, representing the classic American melting pot of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
In terms of photo processing for this picture, firstly, the crop and angle are fractionally different to gain the smallest of gaps between the girl on the right and the right side of the image while maintaining the original aspect ratio. I like keeping the camera’s aspect ratio and not cropping to an arbitrary ratio unless it’s absolutely necessary and the gap just feels a little better to me even if it arguably is less straight than the original image. Secondly, the exposure was increased to bring some extra brightness to the scene and the white was increased fairly substantially to really boost the ice rink impact. The image has had its clarity and sharpness increased to pull out details in the foreground tiles in particular. Finally, a semi-transparent acid wash layer with an emphasis in the blue and green ends of the spectrum was blended in hard light mode to punch up the highlights and shadows and also cool the picture down. This helps to give each of the kids’ tops more detail too.
