This is a picture I took a few years ago and one I keep returning to and use for testing in darktable. It’s high dynamic range, has some clipped highlights and deep blacks, and I’ve never quite been able to get it as I’d like.
I’m looking for a monochrome treatment (there aren’t really any colours of note anyway) and decent handling of the highlights, but with good definition in the brickwork and the shadows.
The main thing I’ve had issues with is the extreme contrast on the right-hand-side.
Probably again my main issue is the highlights, which I prefer in the monochrome but I suppose what I really wanted to say was that I’m more interested in the textures and shapes.
In general definition, textures and sharpness is (partially) lost when applying the standard dynamic range compression, tone mapping and curves. Getting it all back in a nice looking way isn’t all that easy.
I used RawTherapee’s Wavelet levels section for this. I might even have room to push it a little further…
EDIT: Shadows, not shados… typing is hard
And here’s one done with darktable (3.5.0+1536~ge3b5c4181):
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. You’ve inspired me to give it another go. Here’s my alternative take, with some reduction in the local contrast in the highlights and some haze removal to enhance the reflections in the water. I think this one will still be WIP for ever though…
Kind of result seen when heavy handed on the contrast (color mode) equalizer in Darktable. I do not know if it counts as a LAB transform but I believe it works in linear RGB.
For illustration purpose i quick and dirty and verty approximate mock-up of your rendition
