This weekend, while stumbling through the “Reader” section of the WordPress iO app, I discovered the After Before Forum and the One Photo Focus challenge.

The “After Before Forum” was the brainchild of Stacy P. Fischer who had been hosting a regular photo challenge on her blog, Visual Venturing. Currently the “After Before Forum” is hosted by Benjamin Rowe on Aperture64.

Stacy is now the host of the One Photo Focus challenge. The One Photo Focus challenge idea is simple. On the first Friday of the month, a photo is contributed by a member of the After Before Forum. Participants have one the first Friday of the month to edit the image any way they like. The edited image is then submitted back to Stacy where the participants and others can view what was done.

This seemed like it would be fun so I contacted Stacy about my participation. She was happy to send me a link to the NEF and JPG files( Stacy’s a Nikon shooter). September's challenge is the image below.

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My original thought was that I could replace the cloudy sky with something more dramatic. I wanted to layer in a background of a large moon or moons and space rock to give a feeling this ship was docked on an alien ocean. But I could not find a suitable background so I opted for a simpler replacement with a bluer and less cloudy sky. The background image is by Matthew Kosloski who released it as a Creative Common Zero (CC0) image on Unsplash. I removed the buoy and rope and applied a personal preset to adjust the shadows, highlights, and contrast. I also got to use Photoshops' Background Eraser Tool for the first time. I used a tutorial I found on the PhotoShop Essentials website. The result is the image you see in the featured image section of this post.

I didn’t accomplish what I wanted but I am happy with the image I produced given the limited time I had. I started the challenge late with only four days to make my changes.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]