The House of the Haunted Hill II

All of the photos I post on this blog have been manipulated in Photoshop in some way.  Mostly, it's enhancing contrast and saturation and recovering details from the highlights and shadows.  But this photo is more heavily processed than usual, because the original, unedited version basically looks like a hazy, gray day, with little color and a rather drab scene.  Real life wasn't quite so bad, but that afternoon that I took this photo, the sun was slipping behind clouds fairly frequently.

Fortunately, the magic of shooting in RAW format instead of JPEG is that there is a lot of hidden data that can be extracted if the right settings are adjusted.  So I was able to pull what was a relatively lifeless photo (perhaps fitting for the Phantom Manor, but not so interested as a blog post feature) into something that looked more vibrant and golden hour-esque.  The result may be a little obvious, especially in areas like higlight halos, but I think the overall result is still pretty lovely!

Phantom Manor in the afternoon light.