The photograph above was taken in Denver, Colorado back in July. I saw this alley and, without even thinking, snapped a photo of it. The original photograph was left on the cutting room floor, but was rescued the other day when I decided to do some creative editing on it. I won’t go into details, as there are thousands of photoshop tutorial blogs out there for this specific purpose, but I will say that all edits were made in Adobe Lightroom 2. What I like about the resulting image is the immense amount of unpleasant detail. Let’s make one thing clear: This alley was not a clean place. Not all photography is “pretty,” yet photos that are “unpleasant” can still be visually appealing. The dirt and grime of the ground and walls are what makes this photo work.