Asheville, North Carolina.

Note: As I’ve been reading and commenting on others sharing their own Cellpic Sunday images this morning, I’ve noticed that several of my comments on several pages aren’t showing up. I don’t know whether or not they are actually posting. This happened last week as well.

I read every post linked to my site and try to comment. WordPress isn’t posting what I wrote if you don’t see my comment.

The most famous piece of art in the Asheville River Arts District is arguably not even a building. It’s a painted silo located across the railroad tracks from the French Broad River just off West Haywood Street. This silo has become a landmark for Asheville, and its message has changed a few times over the years.

If you search in Google Maps for the Good Vibes Silo, you can get Google Maps to show you how to get to the site, which also has a long wall of graffiti. There is an extensive collection of images that show various iterations of the silo graffiti over the years.

In 2014, the silo sported the message “Good Vibes.” By 2019, local muralists Ian “The Painter” Wilkinson and Ishmael updated it to “Stay Weird,” a message that captured Asheville’s quirky and unique spirit. This became the silo’s most well-known iteration. Later, “Stay Home” was the message during the pandemic, and most recently, “Stay True.” During our visit, the Stay True message had been painted over with what appeared to be random graffiti. Those main messages were painted on the opposite side of the silo from the image I captured for this post.

Beyond the silo, the River Arts District features many artist studios and is a vibrant area reflecting the Asheville artists community. Just down the road from the silo is Old Lymon Street. Take a short drive down Riverside Drive to find some of the studios. Then, drive just past the roundabout to Lymon Street. There, you can soak in the ever-evolving canvas of murals and tags on buildings. Foundation Walls on Old Lyman Street is a particularly interesting spot where graffiti artists are actively encouraged to express themselves.

About the photo: Given the artistic nature of the area and the fact that on the day of our visit, it was cold, dreary, and rainy, I took some creative liberties with this photograph.

In the original image, the sky completely lacked definition. It was a flat cloud ceiling. The only advantage to my photographs that day is that the flat gray sky created a giant “soft box” that provided completely even lighting. After cataloging, straightening, and cropping the image from my Samsung S23U into Lightroom Classic, I sent the photo off to Luminar Neo for an altered reality treatment.

I started with Enhanced AI to give the image extra contrast and definition. Considering the soft available lighting, I was careful not to enhance the colors to make the image too vibrant. I then went to Luminar Neo’s Sky Replacement tool to look for a suitable cloudy sky with at least some definition to add character to the image.

I found a mostly cloudy sky in my collection, but it had some bright blue areas that simply didn’t fit the image as I imagined it. After replacing the sky, I used Neo’s Mask AI to select the sky from within the Develop module. Then, I lowered the sky exposure to darken it, but the sky was still too blue.

I copied the mask, opened the Color tool, and, after pasting the mask, selected the HSL Luminance tool to reduce the blue in the sky. Back in the Develop module, I created two linear gradient masks, a large one from the upper left corner that I angled toward the silo, and another from the upper right, again angled toward the silo. With each mask, I reduced the exposure to darken the sky in the brightest areas.

If you’d like to experiment with these techniques, you can find the altered and original images on my Flickr site here. Download the original image and experiment away. If you don’t have Luminar Neo but have Adobe Photoshop, you can try the basic steps I described from within Photoshop.

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 also acceptable. 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, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner