The barges are under a thick cloud while the rest of the scene is almost fully illuminated by the sun.
I hope to see some more interesting solutions to the problem than mine.
DSC00636.ARW (53.6 MB)
DSC00636.ARW.xmp (19.6 KB)
This file is licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.
GIMP 2.10.38.
Out of curiosity I tried a couple of my plug-ins on this image.
The first was done with the Enhance Shadows plug-in, the second with my Luminosity Mask plug-in.
The quick edit: Tone Equalizer is by far my favorite Darktable tool.
Fun fact: “Bølgen” is either Norwegian or Danish for “The Wave”, and a curious name for such a little ship so far away from home …
Here’s my go… went all the way to a post-apocalyptic London… and back again… then just thought this is fun and bright…
Edit: this is what happened during the processing… but I brought it back
Nice image - thanks for sharing. My attempt with DT recent nightly build. I tried to use only modules that would be available in 5.6.
DSC00636.ARW.xmp (15.8 KB)
Played around with the tone equaliser mask for this, I hope it’s better than default. Didn’t feel the need for a tonemapper at the end, most of it was already in display bounds.
Light and shadows are making a picture lively and interesting. Instead of equalize them, I’m always happy when I have the possibility to emphasize them. So not necessarily what you asked for:
I just used a local gradient mask to brighten up overall exposure, plus a little extra boost to shadows and midtones. That seemed to help a lot with contrast in the bottom half of the image. I also applied a warm tint on top of the main color grade to give a stronger yellow/blue complementary treatment. A very beautiful spot and nice composition. Cheers!
Edited entirely with HDR Finisher. Project file zipped and attached below for your reference.
DSC00636-HDRF.zip (3.3 KB)
Oh, well, you’ll find that even lesser fishing vessels have regularly crossed the North Sea.
Step 1: open with ART, reset the auto-matched gamma curve, export as a 32-bit floating point TIFF without further edits.
Step 2: open the TIFF in GIMP, Filters > Gaussian Blur with radius = 600 and mode = Grain Extract, opacity = 25%, then apply a curve to the result.
A rushed edit in DT using multiple instances of tone equalizer.
DSC00636.ARW.xmp (16.1 KB)
Hello,
Here is my proposal, featuring my experimental branch "Libre DT-Lab with a fairly simple processing workflow. I used three modules: 3DCF, Contrast & Texture and Color Harmonize.
Greetings from the Luberon, 
Christian
I’m not at all sure about this, but I tried to stick to the brief 
Using matched gradient masks to soften the background and lift the foreground without overcooking it. A difficult balance to strike. I used Color LUT to bring back some contrast in the clouds.
Edit: A tighter crop and a braver(!) exposure and vibrance lift in the foreground. What the hell… 
The more I look at other peoples’ edits, the more I think I must have missed the point of the assignment. Most of you seem to be going for a levelized exposure across the image. I tried to show that the background was in bright sun while the lead boats were shadowed by clouds.
