Several years ago I spent a few days visiting Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Many who have visited these parks have spent some time along the Mormon Row area of Grand Teton where several older homes, barns, and other buildings are located. Most of the days of this visit were cloudy and gray, not ideal conditions for photography but one should never pass on the opportunity. This is the original image of one of the cabins taken during that visit.

I use Adobe’s PhotoShop and LightRoom to process most of my photos but try to go lightly with my editing. Usually this means some cropping, maybe some minor adjustment to saturation, and possibly some adjustment to brightness and contrast. At that time I was also using a plugin called NIK Silver Effects. This photo seemed like a good candidate for some editing. I decided to apply a blue filter along with my normal processing and arrived at this view.

When I asked several friends for their preference the choices were balanced. Some liked the original while others liked the filtered image because of the blue skies and some added clarity of the cabin details. Others preferred the original image.

A few months later I decided to make a tabletop book with some of my photos, focusing on older objects like cabins, barns, steam trains, and other similar things. Rather than using the photos in their original form I decided to use sepia toning along with some borders. My goal was to create something like a stack of old images that you might find hidden away in an attic or closet. Images that were in fairly good shape but with some possible fading and borders or edges that were not neatly cut. I though this image would fit the book well and the result is shown here.

So, you now have three treatments of the same photo. Which do you prefer? And, if you are willing to share, why?

I hope you enjoy looking,