Digital image processing is, for me, about using superior tools to produce my photographic images; not to produce digital realities.  But occasionally the subject matter or the situation creates an exception to that rule.

Caledon Hills, Ontario 1997 (D)
There is an area just north of Toronto called the Caledon Hills.  In the fall of '97 I was photographing the remarkable fall colours that were evident that year with my then new Rollei 6008 medium format camera.

Through what must have been an inadvertent bump against the tripod the best image of that morning's shoots was slightly out of focus.  I rarely use any of the myriad of effects that image processing software is capable of.  But, because the transparency was unusable as a straight print I decided to see what I could do with it in PhotoShop. Surprisingly I found that PhotoShop’s Watercolour effect added a bit of additional blur, turning a failure into a dramatic image.

Taken with the Rollei 6008 and 180mm lens on P...