I had an OLLI class in downtown Medford yesterday so I decided to take a camera walk around the area and found this bronze chess player in a plaza which, if memory serves, was a parking lot back in the day. I realized I haven’t spent much time in downtown Medford since returning to the valley. Though I have fond memories of shopping at J.C. Penney with my Mom and cruising on a Friday night in Connie Cook’s Mom’s Cadillac (’68ish I think… the Cadillac, I mean, more like ’72 or ’73 for the cruising) I can’t say I ever really spent much time in downtown Medford. Well, there may be a poem there… but in any event I found the area worthy of further exploration so I look forward to the next five Wednesdays to check it out…not to mention the multitude of food trucks converged on the area.
So, this image was challenging because of the position of the sun putting the chess player in shadow. I opened up the shadows, and desaturated the reds and blues to remove distractions from the background. I then decided that it might benefit from a texture. I chose one with a bronzish tone to it. I was blown away with how well it not only highlighted the bronze tones of the statue but also helped to downplay the shadows on his face.