forgotten photos?

so how did i get here? how did i catch the photo editing bug? this is still something i'm trying to figure out if it's right for me.

i'm all about nature photography, so i like my photographs to be natural, unedited, untouched. we went to a fall photo weekend in the Poconos in October, and i never posted my pictures. i couldn't find one that i was totally happy with (also, my cheap polarizer got stuck on my lens, so things weren't quite working out for me that weekend).


the instructor for the class is all about editing. we spent two days taking photos and had a session all about editing. i was introduced to things like Totally Rad and HDR (which i really don't think is for me) and all of this other software that i can get for ridiculous prices.

but i wasn't totally happy with my fall photography because the colors, in their peak while i was taking the photos, weren't being captured the way i dreamed they would be.

so i took what the instructor said with a grain of salt. after seeing several of his edited images (some of which were HDR that look totally unnatural), i was convinced that i would never edit my photos like this. i feel like it's 'photography with integrity.' i'm not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. these are my photos and this is how i took them. 

but alas, here i am, in this in between world of loving that i've taken some awesome unedited photos (all except one are unedited. the edited one is from the Alamo, discussed here) and wanting to make my photos look even more awesome.

so i've done it again. i pulled out one of the photos from the fall weekend, and played with it. i really like the Boutwell Magic Glasses/Warmer/Boost combo that I used on the Alamo photo. 

unedited - SOOC

post-edits

it's by no means a perfect photo in any way (i'm sure i've got some blinkies in the upper left corner), but man do those colors pop! it looks slightly unnatural to me, but it looks better in some ways.
 

i'll get to going through some of the other photos from that weekend, as i sort of just chose this one at random. hopefully there's a better one. i'm still learning. perhaps some day i'll just be able to get the colors to pop without editing? maybe?