Re: In the early mornng rain.

Thanks JIm, I learned a lot by being allowed to make prints from the negatives of Bob Richardson, Dick Kindig, Donald Rogers, Jack Thode. The film they were using required a lot of dodging and burning in the darkroom to bring out detail in the shadows (running gear usually) and the highlight details in the sky. I was fortunate enough to attend an Ansel Adams workshop in Carmel, CA in the 60s and learned a lot about getting the most from film. What I do in digital is about the same thing I did in the darkroom. A high resolution digital image has detail in the shadows and highlights that film could never record. But that detail does not show itself automatically. Cameras are designed to photograph people and the in camera processing looks for the middle ground. To get the best from digital images, you need to learn image editing software. Many photographers use Lightroom. I use Photoshop as have been using it since 1994. When I worked at HP, I was the HP contact with Adobe and got to use the Windows version of Photoshop before it was released. Lightroom and Photoshop share the same underlying software, Lightroom does not have all the capability of Lightroom but is easier to use.

Some critics call this manipulation. If it is manipulation then Ansel Adams was doing it a long time ago as what I do in Photoshop is same thing he did in the darkroom.

First image is what the camera captured... Nikon D800, top pro camera at the time. Second image is after I darkened the sky and lighten the shadows in Photoshop. Added a touch of contrast and tweaked the white balance a bit. Some will like it, some will not, beauty they say is in the eye of the beholder.