Close To Home – Serendipity Teepee

After a relatively successful trip to Tallulah I decided try to captures some color near by. There is a pine tree near my neighborhood that is a good candidate to explore the classic tree on a hill shot. The skies were blue and clear the leaves on other trees nearby a warm orange. I shot about 8 frames and realized there was nothing really interesting about the tree. So I got back in my car and went in search of other scenic areas close to home. I went a couple of places I thought might have potential but the sun was now too bright or the settings would be better late in the day.

On the way home I decided to pull into a local nature park and take a walk in the woods. As soon as I parked I saw it. Instead of a Tree on a hill, there was a Teepee on a hill. I shot it from all angles: wide, horizontal, vertical, more sky, more foreground, every which way I could think of. I knew I had an interesting subject so chose to work it not knowing if it would be there in the future. Fortunately I still had good sky before the sun was too high. Over the hill I found an interesting grouping of trees to photograph too, but they did not give me the thrill of finding the teepee.

Serendipity Teepee In post processing I played with all my compositions but in the end liked the teepee by itself a little off center to create some tension. You can see the full scene here.

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However I still was not satisfied with the results. I thought it would look better in black and white. I played for awhile and almost lost interest until I noticed the split toning effects in Lightroom. I played with it some more and finally got something I was happy with. Not quite a true split tone but more of an aged color. I also blurred the bottom foreground a bit more to create more focus on the teepee. Overall I am pleased with results. Printing it has proven to be a challenge with my cheap printer, but thats a discussion for another day. Costco did a good enough for now 8×12 for me to study and see if it holds up months from now. A crop of the bottom to 8×10  and square also works for this image.

Serendipity Teepee - Final image