Since I keep procrastinating on the post I planned to write, tonight I decided to “pull a Pete.” I decided to take what some would consider to be a boring photo and see if I could make it into something interesting.

Not only do I take pictures of bottles, but also I take photographs of boxes. Somebody has to do these things, you know.

I looked through some of the box photos I took a month or so ago. I found one that looked like I could do something with it because it had an interesting dent (which ended up being largely covered up in the final image).

I converted it to black and white using a high contrast blue filter. That helped highlight the details. I used Pete’s new favorite tool, the Reduce Noise filter to tweak the image a bit. And, I converted the grayscale image to a duotone image using a second color to give the appearance of an older photograph, which also incidentally helped restore the natural box color, but in a way that it looks like an aged photo.

That made for a cool background. As you can see, the box had “OH” written on it and circled. That was for “Ohio,” obviously so marked for sorting and shipping purposes or whatever. I left that in the cropped image and it gave me an idea.

I dug through some of my camera phone photos I took a couple months ago of Ohio. I desaturated them a bit and applied a sepia filter to give them an aged look, as though they were a somewhat aged and faded color photograph. I added borders to make them look like old-time photos too.

Then, I added my copyright line, and gave it a background to make it look like it was on a torn piece of paper attached to the original image rather than just something added with Photoshop.

After that, I took a section of the box where the tape was and made it into a layer overlaying the photo to the side. I desaturated the layer and adjusted the opacity so that it appears the tape is going over the photo rather than the photo being pasted on top of it. I think this is the final touch that pulled the whole thing together.

Apparently, this is the view of Ohio that some people, like John Chow and his commenters, have. Some people seemingly believe that Ohio is nothing but corn fields as far as the eye can see.

But, that’s not the case at all. There’s also sugar:

That’s just a terminal for sugar. Pioneer Sugar (and Big Chief Sugar) is actually owned by the Michigan Sugar Company, which has a factory in my home town in Michigan. We used to occasionally get sugar beets that had fallen off the truck. Of course, you can buy seeds and grow them yourself, but that kind of takes away the magic of sugar beets appearing on the roadside in your youth.

Anyway, that Pioneer Sugar terminal is located in Findlay, Ohio, which is also known as Flag City, USA.

The Marathon Oil Company used to be headquartered in Findlay. They aren’t anymore, but they still have a subsidiary there. As you can see, they go all out with the Flag City theme.

Traveling further south, you enter the National Aviation Heritage Area. First, you’ll encounter the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta. As you get closer to Dayton, you’ll see reliefs like this one on walls alongside the interstate and bridges:

You can read more about the attractions in the National Aviation Heritage Area over at DeboHobo.com in “Not All Destinations Require Air Travel to Reach.” Don’t miss it!

A water tower under construction, south of Dayton, Ohio. Plus free advertising for McDonald’s…

I couldn’t get a good shot of this one. It was taken on the way back from a photo shoot at a client’s location. I could have gotten a better shot on the way there, but the camera was in the back seat.

Anyway, it was more interesting to see than it appears in the photo.