Another “Cool Photo” Entry!

This image comes from Eric Laurits.

the ceremony had just finished and we were in a trolley [it's Maine,
what can i say!] heading to the reception site. As we were putting
along the trolley began to sputter and slowly came to a rest, smoke
pouring out of the engine. The wedding party hopped out and since we
just happened to be right across the street from a beautiful old
covered bridge, headed over there with a bottle of champagne.  They
were toasting and laughing about the whole thing and just hanging out
until the “replacement trolley” showed up.  The light was flooding in
through the sides of the bridge as it does only in New England
summers.  One of the bridesmaids was asking the bride about her dress
[which her grandmother made for her  - completely from scratch!] and
the maid of honor, not quite used to the trimmings and trappings of
wedding celebrations, shot me a look that is wise beyond her years.

To process this photo i basically just ran an action that i created a
few years back called “yells, y’all.” I’d have to really dive back
through the steps to give you specific details, but basically what it
does is this : creates a duplicate layer and desaturates to about 40%
[blending mode to soft light i think]. Then it creates a layer with
just the shadow detail and softens it a bit.  Then we select
highlights and create curves layer set to hue to give it the
beginnings of the color overlay. The whole thing is then duplicated
and set to overlay where i run a high pass filter and some gaussian
blur and fade to taste. Then I throw a curves layer on top that really
tones the yellow/gold to taste.  I sharpened the shadows with unsharp
mask ad the midtones and highlights with smart sharpen.