The rodeo as a whole is a pretty spectactular experience but one of the sights I love occurs at the very beginning as a single rider carries the flag into the centre of the arena for the singing of the National Anthem. The lighting at this point is great – lasers and lots of stars projected around the arena – but I have yet to manage to capture an image of it that does it justice. Here, instead, is the flag bearer waiting in the wings for her cue.
On a technical note, I finished the processing of this image in Nik/Google’s Color Efex Pro plug-in. I had been meaning to buy a couple of the Nik packages for a while but with this week’s announcement of a huge price drop ($149 for the entire 6 tool collection vs. $100-$200 for each one individually) it was a no brainer. I’ll definitely be using this in future – the interface is very easy to use and the results look nice. The problem I have with most of these plug-ins is that I can accomplish the same thing using other means in Photoshop already but I reckon Nik (and, for that matter, OnOne Perfect Suite) win on the grounds that they allow me to accomplish the effect faster.