Whoooooo Spooky!

Well some people might think so - spooky I mean.
Had a very big afternoon with our little camera club. I gave a talk on iPhonography with projected and physical (mounted) examples. As usual I pretty much left everything until the last minute, will one never learn.
At home after the meeting feeling pretty weary so decided to photograph the skull again as it was set up and ready for shooting.
As I was processing this image it occurred to me that it is really and exercise in Mood, Tone, Shadows, and Texture.
I really like its "moodiness" and "otherworldliness".
The skull is just sitting against a background that is covered with very dark material, and sitting on another piece of very dark material. I manipulated the image in Lr4.2 to deepen the foreground and background and then just a mixture of clarity (wonderful with old bones), colour adjust (added a hint of green), sharpening, and lowering the exposure. The only thing that was a bit tedious was clone stamping out all the little spots on the material - light coloured dog hairs (plenty of them) and other assorted rubbishy bits.
Oh and shot with a bounce flash.
Fun, quick and easy; hope to get out into the landscape tomorrow, weather permitting.
:-))

Definately bigger better here.