One Photo Focus is a monthly photography challenge hosted by Stacy Fischer at Visual Venturing. The participants in this challenge edit the same image and share it on the One Photo Focus Forum. You can get more information and join the One Photo Focus monthly challenge at Stacy Fisher’s Visual Venturing. Thanks to Y. Prior of priorhouse for letting us practice on the original photo. This month’s photo is actually a cell phone photo.  It’ll be interesting to see everyone’s edited photos.  Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the original photo.)

My Version

The Process

I loved the look of this room!  There was so much going on in the room that I had a difficult time deciding where to focus.

First, I decided to crop the photo to place an emphasis on the large windows on the second story.  Then, I brighten the light in my favorite Fotor app.    It looked better; but I thought it’d be fun to try for something unusual.

October equals haunted house in my mind; so I decided to try to change the atmosphere of this room.   My goal was to make the room look full of mystery and magic.  A place where ghosts might want to just hang out.

To get the mystery look,  I added in some light trails from the effects in the Fotor app.  Next, I used the Cool Day filter in Macphun’s Aurora HDR Pro to get some different colors.  Finally, I darkened the colors a little to get the ghostly look I wanted.

What do you think?  Do you think ghosts might be floating around in this room?

Original Photo

This is Y.Prior’s original cell phone photo.   This is the lobby of The Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia.  According to Y. Prior it was built in 1895. Following a fire, the interior was redone in 1901. The carpet in the atrium cost $120,000 (years ago).”