Photo of a section of the Winter Lights display at Seneca Creek State Park in Gaithersburg, Maryland

Behind the Photography Scenes:
Upon entering the park, I got out of the car and headed across the street with my tripod. Five seconds later, I was back in the car with a stern warning from the park police not to stop or get out of the car. So I had to resort to other measures. As my husband drove, I stood in the back seat sticking my head out of the moonroof, snapping pictures as we drove along.

This photo was beautiful straight out of the camera. However, as I had a lot of similar photos, I decided to make this one a little different. Using Photoshop, first, I added a "blizzard" effect. Then, I selected the road and cars and used "paint daubs" to blur the cars and make them look like a painting rather than a photograph. I applied the paint daubs only to the road and cars in order to avoid blurring/de-focusing the beautiful, circular points of light making up the arches and snowflakes in the light display. Finally, I used a colored gradient map to give the reddish hue to the photo.

Keywords:
festival of lights, winter lights, christmas lights, holiday lights, holidays, holiday spirit, christmas spirit, christmas cheer, holiday cheer, maryland tourism, tourists, tourist, winter, family fun, children's activities, night photography, photographing lights, state parks, seneca creek state park, city of gaithersburg, snow, snowflakes, blizzard, rain, photoshop actions, gradient map, paint daubs

Ref: 2007_6820 Winter Photos

Location: Seneca Creek State Park, Gaithersburg, MD

Photographer: Irene Abdou