Yesterday I held the first Teaching Moment Photographic Workshop – Rusty Old Wrecks. We had beautiful over-cast conditions during the entire workshop and the forecasted rain held off for much of the day. There were six participants, eager to create images of these old dilapidated gems. I am looking forward to sharing the participant photos with you soon. I will be announcing a winter installment of this workshop as part of the Teaching Moment Photographic Workshop series, as well as a host of other awesome locations where folks can hone their photographic techniques and vision under the instruction of yours truly. Today’s post features some of the imagery that I created during the event as a way of showing the participant various compositional options for the enormous number of wrecks at the auto yard.
When I process my image files of the rusty old wrecks I often like to apply some Nik Detail Extractor, Nik Tonal Contrast, or Topaz Labs Clarity to enhance the grunginess of the rusted metal. Sometimes I add a touch of all three photoshop plug-ins to really grunge it up!
After applying a touch of grunge to the image files the only other step that I perform to optimize the photos is a simple “S” curve to pump up the level of contrast within the scene. The image directly above was a new find for me and I have created several Creative Edit options that I will share with you in a future blog post. Directly below is my favourite wreck at the auto yard. I just love the blues mixed in the the pinkish reds and the browns of the autumn grasses and weeds.
Andrew McLachlan 
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