Why revisit it? Well, I was going to print it on metallic paper and hang it on the wall. Hoping to have the detail is the shadow pop up under nice lighting. Upon further evaluation it was just simply too dark.
So... I had another whack at it last fall.... too blue and much too gaudy. BLECH!!!!!
Letting the field lie fallow it took until the end of the year that I remembered to try it again. This is my third and hopefully final try. It looks more like I remember it looking, except a little more.... vivid? The camera just cannot capture what the eye sees in reality. I wanted to forget that reality of what I saw and simply create the image I WANTED to see. Minus the black borders and copyright/title of course...
I feel satisfied with this shot as is. Still not sure I am going to print it though, I am a cheap cuss and I am coveting a couple lenses, and 16x20 gallery wraps are not cheap!
Now for the interesting, or not so interesting part, depending on your perspective. Here are my original three shots as they looked when I imported them into Photomatix. (These are 8-bit JPEG's taken from the 16-bit TIFF's.) In my RAW converter (ACR whatever the version is that is attached to CS 6) I adjusted the WB to taste, brought the shadows up 100%, and the highlights down to whatever level eliminated the clipping indicators, and bumped the clarity and vibrance 25 each.
-2 EV (2 stops under exposed)
0 EV compensation (exposure the camera chose )
+2 EV (2 stops overexposed)
Looking back I probably could/should go a little warmer with my RAW conversions, but I was able to adjust the WB in CS 6 to a reasonable spot. I could go back and do it again but frankly I get kinda tired of messing with photos after awhile. Looking at the same image just makes me a little buggy!
