Photography project: Create a gritty monotone

Sometimes I get an image, that has the right feel, but has a lot of things against it technically speaking.  I actually tossed this image, and then resurrected it from the recycle bin after reading how to do a gritty monotone technique.  The article suggested working with a street scene; being a nature photographer I used what I had….

I made this photograph while hiking in the McDowell Sonoran Desert Preserve in Scottsdale, Arizona.  I used my infrared camera and happily played with all of the bright sunlight and clouds.

All of this processing was done in Lightroom.  I would affectionately label the technique as “cajun-style cooking”.  You push all of the Basic sliders to their extremes, make tone curve adjustments to the RGB curve, and the blue curve, add some split tones, and an extreme vignette.

I have to admit I was not sure about this effect, but its growing on me.  Now if I just had the time to dig through my rubbish bin and see if there are any street scenes in there….