I took a photograph of several wooden barrels that are placed around the Port Jeff Brewing Company, because I thought that the positioning of the barrels in front of the company’s brick exterior would make a for a rustic-looking, monochromatic composition.

The processing of the image involved several aspects of editing: First the exposure was raised slightly to brighten the entirety of the image, and then the contrast was increased because the tonality appeared too narrow. To contribute to this, whites and blacks were also increased, while shadows were decreased.

The white balance of the image was adjusted to be warmer to correct the blueish temperature, and the hue was adjusted to have slightly more magenta. I raised the saturation to bring out the rust on the hoops of the barrel, and to also help the various colors of the worn bricks emerge rather than remain as dull as they were.

Along the way, I masked the barrel, the wooden deck flooring, and the brick wall separately so that I could edit them individually to make each aspect prominent in respect to each other–for example, I was able to increase the texture of the barrel to emphasize the knots and grain in the wood, without creating unnecessary texture in the background elements.