A Sense of Awe in the Mountains (Blue Ridge Parkway) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A setting looking to the south while taking in a view of a Flowering Dogwood and a backdrop of mountains and blues skies. This is at the Humpback Rocks Visitors Center along the Blue Ridge Parkway. My thought in composing this image was to center the dogwood tree and then adjust the focal length to have the tree fill most of the image, while including some nearby trees and grassy meadow to add to the setting. I felt the whites of the tree blooms would be a good contrast to the earth-tones in the nearby setting. It was as I began working on the image in post production that I then decided to once again try out the sky replacement setting in Photoshop with this image. The blue skies with the clouds definitely seemed appropriate for this national park service setting. So the skies are from an image I captured in west Texas, but all else is captured with my Nikon Z8 Mirrorless Camera. I later worked with control points in DxO PhotoLab 7 and then made some adjustments to bring out the contrast, saturation and brightness I wanted for the final image.
