When most of us take a photo, we have a mental image of the scene. It's easy to love the photo but the original on the right is dead in the water. Great sky but it begs the question - is the sky the photo? The reflection in the tidal pool looked so much better in reality. So did the sand. The reddish tint that is at Frist Encounter Beach looked like dirt.
Lightroom to the rescue. The first step is to crop the original, so it loses the sky but keeps the subject matter. Our clouds and their reflection get positioned slightly in the top third. Shift the hue to red, add a little sharpness and it looks great. The reflection in the water becomes mirrorlike, as it appeared that day. The shift from the original photo is so much closer to reality.
The Lightroom work also gives the photo some dimension. You can feel the dimension by the perceived depth of field it adds. The "punch" in the cloud-to-cloud reflection relationship brings the eye to the middle of the photo which in this case is the subject. We had a mental image, and the retouched version recreates it and captures the reality.
Although not the intent, the comparison shows the limitations of a photograph. Nature works eye to brain compared to a mirrorless camera’s flow of lens to digital sensor to LCD screen to eye and then to brain. A little technology saved the photo from the trash file.
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