With autumn leaf season quickly coming to an end, I decided to take a trip to Petit Jean State Park to try to get some final pictures of the fall foliage. Realizing I hadn’t been to the park’s crown jewel, Cedar Falls, in about a year, I thought that would be a great place to go.
With a very clear idea of the images I wanted to capture, I left my house at around 5:00 that morning. My goal was to hit the trail right at or just before sunrise so I could maximize my shooting time before the sun got too high in the sky and created too much lighting contrast for good pictures.
After driving for about an hour and a half, I took the turn into the driveway leading to the parking lot of Mather Lodge, where the Cedar Falls trail begins and ends. That’s when I saw something I had never expected to see: a sign saying the trail was closed.
Hoping someone had forgotten to take the sign down, I kept driving. Then, I saw the second sign and, then, a third sign. I finally had to admit that my hike to the waterfall just wasn’t going to happen.
I discovered later that the trail had been closed because the small pedestrian bridge that crosses Cedar Creek had been destroyed during a storm and had not yet been replaced.
Reversing course, I began making my way back to the main highway. Just before I reached the road, I passed the old water tower that had been constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps and decided to stop.
I took a few shots of some fallen leaves lying around a couple of small boulders. With the leaves and boulders all being shades of brown, I didn’t think they would make for compelling photographs. But, since I was there, I might as well get them.
As I was preparing to leave, I noticed the door to the old water tower was opened slightly. When I saw it, the first thought that went through my mind was it was a doorway to another dimension.
The light level was still pretty low, but I could make out details in the area behind the door with my eyes. Photographically, however, there was an extreme amount of contrast between the outer part of the tower and its interior, and I knew if I exposed for the exterior, the interior would record as extremely dark if not completely black, which I thought would emphasize this “doorway to the unknown.”
Looking at the picture on the computer, everything turned out as I had expected. But, it seemed to be missing something. It just didn’t have the wow factor I was looking for. I tried several different things to no avail. I decided to walk away for a little while to see if inspiration would come to me.
A few hours later, I began to think about the movie “The Wizard of Oz.” One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is when Dorothy opens the door of her house and sees the world of Oz for the first time. After watching the first part of the movie in essentially a sepia tone, the colorful Oz is absolutely amazing. I thought I could create a similar effect with my picture.
I converted the photograph to black and white and then made adjustments to exposure, contrast, highlights and shadows to increase the overall contrast of the image. In Lightroom’s Color Grading tab, I adjusted the hue, saturation, luminance, and blending in the highlights, midtones, and shadows to create the sepia tone.
Opening the file in Photoshop, I used the lasso tool to select a portion of dark area between the door and stone door frame. I then selected another picture I had made at the Old Mill several years ago, copied it, and, using the Paste Into command, pasted the Old Mill photograph into the selected area in the original image.