Eureka Springs is one of the most unique places to visit in Arkansas. Many of the buildings, especially those in the downtown area, are of Victorian design and were built with local stone. The streets are narrow and winding, and they are so hilly in some locations that some of the buildings have street level entrances on more than one floor.
Going through my photo library recently (thank you, coronavirus), I came upon this picture I took a few years ago on a short weekend trip my wife, dog and I took to Eureka Springs.
The morning we were leaving to come home, we decided to make a quick last stop downtown and take a walk around the area. It was an early Sunday morning, the temperatures were cool, the streets were empty, and the stores were closed. This gave us a great opportunity to take our time and really enjoy the morning.
As we walked up Spring Street and rounded a corner, I turned around to take a look behind us and saw this scene. Well…not this scene, exactly. What I saw with my eyes were several store fronts lining the street. What I saw in my mind was something that reminded me of something I might have seen in the wild west in the 1800s. But, it took some work in Photoshop to create the photograph I had envisioned.
First, the original sky was clear and pale blue. Frankly, it was boring and needed to be replaced. Carefully choosing a different sky from my files that matched the overall lighting of the scene, I selected the original sky and pasted the new sky into the selected area.
Next, I cloned out a car that was parked on the street that runs off to the left between the two buildings and some power lines that ran across the frame. These were both very distracting. Besides, the wild west didn’t have cars or power lines.
Finally, using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro software, I converted the color image to black and white to create this final image.