Icy Pine Needles (Posterized Photo)

Icy Pine Needles (Posterized Photo) Originally uploaded by randubnick

Last night we had freezing rain and this morning everything was coated with ice. I didn't take any pictures while I was out chipping ice off the stairs, sidewalk, and car because I was too busy trying not to slip and slide. But tonight I found some photos that I took in 2005 during a late December ice storm. At that point, I still had my first phonecam, and it took soft, low resolution images. I remember taking this photo and thinking that the pine needles looked like blown glass. When I saw this picture tonight, I decided that I still liked the composition, but the photo needed some help. First, I fiddled with the contrast and resized the image to make everything more visible. Then I posterized the image in Painter IX. But there was an orange leaf stuck in the branches, in the middle of the composition, and although I liked the colors, I thought the leaf was a distraction. So I went back to Painter IX and used digital pastel to draw over the leaf, replacing it with background colors and shadows. But I left a little bit of the red and orange from the leaf because I thought they added some zip to the image. When I was satisfied with the drawing, I posterized the area to make it blend in to the photo.