Two weeks ago me and my camera went on a trip to a sleepy village of Oud-Zuilen (Utrecht area in the Netherlands), where – according to my tourist guide – a picturesque castle called Slot Zuylen is to be found.
Well, let me start by saying that the village proved to be a sleepy one indeed, not to mention tiny, and the narrow road leading to it made us doubt a few times whether we’re actually on a road or not. And even though the castle does appear in tourist guides and has a website suggesting it is a tourist place (www.slotzuylen.nl), I have a distinct feeling we’ve been one of the first non-Dutch tourists to visit the place.
Not that I’m complaining – the above meant that the place was almost completely empty of other human beings, which in turn allows for better photo shots, leaving the views uncluttered. And what views they were! The place is really, really charming, with the kind of enchanting atmosphere which tells your instincts to expect magic to happen any time now.
I must say, the photos I took there are one of the best in the last few months; I’ve chosen one of them to show you how you can enhance the magic of a beautiful shot.
Below you see 3 versions of the same photo; it took me less than 5 minutes to create these with the help of Adobe Photoshop, but a lot of other, simpler photo-editing software tools also includes the necessary functions. The first shot at the top is the original photo; the second one is its version in sepia (Actions>Sepia toning) and the third one is its black-and-white version (Image>Adjustments>Black & White). Not only you can get three photos with an extraordinary mood, but you can put them together to form a collage, the way I did below (I added black background and white frames, 5px wide, around the photos).
Print it out, frame it, and you get a beautiful wall decoration or a gift idea, depending what you need! (wow, I just made this post suitable for adding to Creative at Home and Creative Gifts category ;-) I must be getting better at this whole blogging thing!)