Tunnel vision

It’s easy to get into Lightroom, see a distinct problem and focus on fixing it. In this case, the sky was blown out. It was a solid white that burned the retinas. And remembering how misty and damp it was that morning, I wanted to edit in that manner. So, I got to it dropping clarity, sharpness and contrast, dropping dehaze on some masks, raising it on another, same with whites, and so on it went. And it wasn’t until I was one edit from finishing that I noticed the most glaring issue.

Composition.

Look at the bottom left. There’s the top of a tree there. The primary issue with the photo was never exposure, it was composition. All that work done while missing something so obvious! Cropping from the bottom puts another strong tree top at the bottom of the image. Cropping from the left leaves the image lopsided.

I hope I took at least one good photo from that morning because the atmosphere was quite memorable, especially when compared to the bright sunshine two days before.