Enchanted pool

Took this shot on the top of Enchanted Rock. We've had a lot of rain in Texas for Summer. I read that it is 20 inches more rainfall than usual, so far for the year. Amanda & I took advantage of the gap in the rain to scramble up the pink granite to the top. I'd seen photos of the twisted tree at the top of the rock before but hadn't see much water there. This is actually a pretty small pool but I'm lying down quite close to the edge so the forced perspective makes it look quite a bit larger. I was trying to play with the reflections in the water and also balance the tree with the sort of similarly shaped cloud on the right hand side for contrast with the similar shape to the tree/ bush but inverted tonality. I'm not entirely happy with the sharpness in this shot, but that's what I get for not taking a tripod with me I suppose. Converted to black and white using the channel mixer, along with a selective colour layer to allow manipulation of individual colours. Mainly that was used to pull the somewhat mildly cyan sky towards a much darker blue that could then be converted to the dark black you can see here, to give contrasting clouds. The original was shot with a polariser but as I was trying to keep the water reflections, the effect ended up quite mild. Canon 1DII, 17-40 F4L