Photo inspired by the work of local AZ photographer Jon Matthies. You can see Jon's work here at his website.

In this image I forced myself to shoot with my 50mm on recent trip to San Fran in an effort to try and develop my eye. I have never fallen in love with my 50mm and have used my 60mm far more but most prefere my 28-70mm zoom.

It was good challenge and experience as it did give me some different perspective. I also forced myself to try different camera angles and of course new approaches to post processing.

In this image I processed mostly in LR3, and then brought it into CS5. I applied a levels adjustment but used the lightness bar at the bottom to remove practically all light. I then used a brush at about 10% opacity and just got creative with painting back in the normal image exposure to a degree I liked.

Its a cool technique if your shooting the mundane and want to get some sizzle in your imagery. I then brought it back into LR3 and applied a blur fileter with contrast. Thats it maybe 10min tops in post.