I appreciate this photo not so much for its artistic qualities, but because it was a challenging photo for me. I don't think it was a very good day for experimenting with new techniques, specifically moving to the much smaller apertures that give landscape photos their sharpness and large DOF, but I was determined to give it a go.

We got rain almost all day, severely limiting the time I could spend shooting. Even when the rain stopped in the evening, the skies remained an uninspiringly dismal shade of grey. The light wasn't optimal either, dim and filtering through the overhead trees. I shot aperture priority at f/22, underexposed by two stops to bring out the foliage greens.

In Photoshop I used a contrast masking technique similar to the one described on Luminous Landscape to resurrect the murky, shadow details and also slightly boosted saturation and contrast to more accurately recreate the scene as I saw it.

I think this is one of the more complex photos I've made, from getting the original exposure to processing it into a pleasing (to me) scene. I'm definitely interested in comments on this one. (From any of my huge audience of two people.)