I am going through old photos and deleting stuff that I am not going to use. I came across this picture and thought it might be fun to share. Photo was taken when the sun was directly overhead on a (almost) cloudless day.
This photo is shared under CC BY-NC-SA
Another excellent image that didn’t need much massaging at all. I love it when a garden gets a little wild!
My edit in DT 5.3 using my trusty old shadow and highlights module to bring out the cement feature
_DSC2294.ARW.xmp (17.3 KB)
I do enjoy a good garden…and this definitely is a fine example.
Again, I wasn’t too sure what I wanted to get out of this, but I had fun experimenting with more uniform masking. I used the additive uniform mask for exposure, and the uniform harmonic mean mask in the color equalizer module.
Outside of that I utilized the tone eq to adjust highlights and shadows, contrast eq for general appearance, then diffuse and sharpen to tame it down a bit, as I always create a little bit of bloom with the contrast eq.
Other than that I stick to a pretty basic set of adjustments…push all the buttons with minute adjustments until I think it looks better.
I was never very satisfied with the pagoda, it is hard to balance the shadows so as to maintain 1) the sense of hard noon-ish light, 2) have enough light and contrast in the pagoda, and 3) manage the transition of shadows from the padoga to the tree trunk on the left in a way that looks natural.
You did a nice job!
That, in the end, is why this photo has been languishing in my “meh” pile. As a mere record it is fine, but there is nothing that makes me excited about it.
No doubt! Although, from what I understand, it is not normally this…shaggy. 
