I photographed this image at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in December of 2008. The cactus on the right in an Organ Pipe, the rare species I talked about in a previous blog. The sun was just beginning to make its presence known and was behind me. Because of the low light, I used a tripod.
While I was lucky to have such a beautiful moon that morning, the image came out a little flat for my taste. So I started working on it in both Lightroom and Photoshop. So, indeed, the image has been “pumped up” a little bit and looks a little better than it actually did…still, it is not that far off.
Being in Tucson has afforded me the pleasure of going to the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. While there, I learned that several revered photographers from our past, including Ansel Adams, pumped up their images quite a bit while in a darkroom. I saw the original negative and first test print of a very famous image by Adams, and, let me tell you, the final print was so very different than the test print.
So while I used to be skeptical of too many enhancements in my images, I am not anymore, although I will always confess to it when possible.
I am working on revising my current Web site and am going to have a special section on enhanced images. This way, I can do any crazy thing to an image I want as I will be proudly telling the viewers that is exactly what I did.
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