Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Whimbrel Nature Photography! I've got a lot of posts in the pipeline, so stay tuned and thanks for your patience.  I thought I'd post this image in celebration of the holiday.  This "Frankenstein" of post-processing is something I'd probably never do with my nature images, but it is fun to play with the family photos and practice my processing skills.  First I made a faux-HDR by duplicating the original image in Lightroom twice and adding or substracting 2 stops of exposure from those images, then those three images were processed as an HDR using Photomatix.  Then I brought the resultant HDR into Photoshop and did a Gradient Map B&W conversion.  Then, finally, using the gradient map as a layer mask, I painted out the gradient map on the pumpkins, bringing back the color in just those spots.  This image was taken on a family pumpkin/apple picking trip to Crooked Run Orchard in Purcellville, VA.