Steven Bourelle Digital Arts

This image was shot at Hyde’s Mill in South-west Wisconsin. What a cool little place.

We drove 150 miles, one way, just to see this beautiful little mill. It was worth every mile. When we got there it was very cloudy, perfect conditions for shooting the mill. The sun came out a little later and the scene became way to contrasty. Along with the mill there is an old blacksmith building, a bunch of grinding stones and three old rusty turbines.

In processing this image I did something I’ve never done before. I used Lightroom’s develop presets. Normally when I work on a black and white, or in this case sepia image, I do all the work in Photoshop and use a combination of Nik Software’s Silver Efexs Pro and adjustment layers. I wanted to do a black and white image of this scene and for some reason I started clicking on the presets. When I clicked on the sepia one I liked what I saw, then I clicked on a couple more and things really got interesting. I played around with the contrast, added a vignette and then exported the image.

Then I opened it up in Photoshop and continued to play around with it. I used Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro to add a little more vignette and to reposition it a little. I also did some burn work here and there and did some more contrast work with adjustment layers.

Before we left on this trip, I had a vision in my mind of the image I wanted from the mill. This image is pretty close to what I saw in my mind. It’s almost as if my subconscious knew what I wanted and clicked on the right Lightroom presets to give it to me.

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