Almost Forgotten

A bum knee has kept me closer to the computer than usual for the past couple of days. It has given me the chance to dig into a project I had set aside - the creation of a Blurb book of my Patagonia adventures. It has been fun to revisit these images and apply a few newly learned Photoshop techniques to them. I have discovered that "select:color range" can be a powerful way to do a pretty decent job of isolating colors that I want to brighten. I find that when I can do this, say, to the leaves on a tree or some colorful foreground plant life, it can really add depth to my image. Another trick that I have been using lately is to convert the background to a smart object, then go to "Image" - "Adjustments" - "Variations". In this panel you can work with midtones, highlights, and shadows to lighten or darken these select portions of the image.

I found two images in my raw collection from Torres del Paine that I had not originally selected for my gallery and spent some time with them. I am very pleased with the result - they show the moodiness of the scene, which was a pretty cloudy and blustery day. I had not orginally selected them because the Torres were obscured by the clouds. I hope you will agree that the result is very dramatic! A true lesson for all of us photographers about the importance of backing everything up and not discarding randomly. You may find a diamond in the rough on a future visit to your archives.