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"Kayla"


There is mystery, irony and perhaps a little pathos in this photograph. Kayla, the unknown and unseen subject of this photograph went to considerable time and trouble to carefully paint her name on this remote rocky outcrop in the village of Old Perlican in eastern Newfoundland. There may or may not be an interesting back story here, but I choose to imagine that there is one!

I wanted to focus the viewer's eye on "KAYLA" without losing the visual context of a remote seaside village. To do this I used the vignetting tool in DxO PhotoLab and created vignetting of both brightness and focus. The central point of the vignette effect was on the letter 'Y'.

 The BEFORE image was significantly underexposed; I fixed this with an exposure adjustment. I used tone curve adjustments to enhance contrast throughout, and a fine contrast adjustment adjustment to bring out detail in the rock. I also isolated the letters in the rock and reduced contrast there slightly to enhance the color of the letters.

 The BEFORE image had unwanted blue/cyan/magenta overtones which I eliminated with white balance and hue/saturation adjustments.

 The image needed a minor horizon adjustment to correct the upward tilt on the left side of the BEFORE image. I cropped the image slightly from the top-right.
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