ART and GIMP
I have no idea how it really looked, nor if there indeed is a definite way it looked. Our eyes / brain adjust over time and as the sun got brighter, I’m sure I would’ve seen more and more detail in the diffuse light reflected back onto the cliff face. I’ve tried to reach a point where it looks like I would expect it to look.
ART 1.23
2024-09-24_07-52-120.NEF.arp (33.2 KB)
All vision is performed by a living being and as such is subjective, so nothing really looks anything.
Furthermore, we should all acknowledge that any image we think we see is a COMPOSITE.
When we look at a scene, our eyes make some rapid attention shifts between those points in the scene that our brain deems to be salient. From those readings, which may be made with different apertures (=quick changes in pupil), the brain constructs a composite image, by filling in between the points observed, from what the brain remembers from experience and what it expects. So in PP of this image to set luminosity (exposure) values differently for the sky and the mountainside, is likely how it was ‘really’ seen.