photobyjohnbo

Cellpic Sunday – The Cottage Garden

The Cottage Garden.

Brookings, South Dakota.

The 2023 Steiner Family Reunion was held at Arlington, South Dakota. Our three-day reunion gives attendees plenty of extra time to visit interesting places in nearby communities. Today’s post features a visit to McCrory Gardens which is located on the campus of South Dakota State University at Brookings.

I will be sharing a Travel Tuesday post in the near future that tells a more complete story of McCrory Gardens, and a few Cellpic Sunday images captured that day as well. On our walk through the many gardens that day, we came upon this little cottage and its nearby garden behind the small picket fence.

The Cottage Garden is surrounded by annuals, perennials, herbs, and vegetables. There is also a weeping willow tree that gracefully accompanies the cottage. The garden is a popular spot for weddings and other special events or simply a beautiful place for photographers to explore.

According to the SDSU website here, the Cottage Garden is designed in the style of an English cottage garden, which is characterized by informal design elements, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants. The building for the space was once a gas station located in Lake Preston, SD. It was donated to McCrory Gardens in 1996 and subsequently moved onto the Cottage Garden site. I would have never guessed that the charming cottage is a former gas station.

About the photo: The only camera I brought to the garden was my Samsung S23U cell phone. After downloading the images to my Adobe Lightroom Classic catalog, I tweaked the crop and perspective to “square up” the image. Then I sent it off to Luminar Neo where I finished the touch-up. I added a touch of “structure” and used the Enhance AI to bring out the blue in the mostly cloudy sky. Click on the image above to view it in 2K HD via my Flickr site.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

27 comments

  16. I would never have guessed that the cottage was a gas station. It reminds me of a hobbit house in New Zealand. I love the brilliant colors. You did a fabulous job with the sky! I hope you will hold classes in Scottsdale! LOL

    Reply

    • Neo’s Enhance AI tool has a separate sky enhancer that sure seems to find even the smallest hint of blue and bring it out.
      Frankly, many of my images could be processed just with Lightroom, but I find Neo’s tools to be easier to use and more effective for me.

      Reply

      • It does a better job than lightroom’s masking feature. I get an error message on some of my photos. I have no idea why that happens.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.