I have quite a few pictures of parking lots. They are are an overlooked resource for photographers. Perhaps someday I’ll convince a publisher to put them out as a coffee table book, America’s Most Scenic Parking Lots. I shall be the Ansel Adams of parking lots. Yes, for sure. For now, however, I’m still building inventory, and the other day I took one in a parking lot in Coyote Hills Regional Park near San Francisco Bay. It had the potential for high drama, at least as parking lots go.

My two frames spliced neatly into a panorama in Photoshop™ using the cylindrical option. The fence and bicycle add interest and provide scale. The hills typify California summer dryness. The common feature of parking lots is that the open space leaves the neighboring scene unobstructed. Overall, the image has potential, but it is weak.

For starters I darkened the image overall, then selected the sky with the magic wand tool. I increased the contrast of the sky with the levels control.

A larger version is here. That’s better, but we are still short of real drama.

If one wants drama, and I do, there is always the Dramatic filter in the Adjust plug-in set from Topaz Labs. I started over with unadjusted spliced panorama and applied the filter. The filter has many options. In this case, the potent one was the brightness control. I darkened the scene, leaving the other controls are the defaults. The results are, um, dramatic.

A larger version is here.

Too much? No, no, there can never be too much drama. … Well, maybe, just a little.