Warrior 2
It’s rare that I know where shots have been taken for Raw War, but this is an exception. It’s the unmistakable ‘Tunnel View’ of the Yosemite Valley, made famous by photo legend Ansel Adams. This amazing sight hits you when you drive out of the Wawona tunnel; quite rightly, there’s a car park there to allow you to soak it up and get the camera out.
Because of its fame and heritage, the natural editing choice is to go for a black-and-white rendition, as James has; but I’m going to resist that urge, as this image offers loads of scope for colour, too.
The main issues for this shot are restoring highlight detail to the bright clouds and brightening the trees in the foreground. I’m also going to crop out the tree on the left and look for a way to accentuate the misty haze in the distance. And I’ll create some warmer, less uniform lighting on the nearest trees, which will serve to invite the viewer into the scene.
1 Restore highlights
In Camera Raw, after ticking the two boxes in the Lens Corrections tab to minimise fringing and distortion, I selected the Crop Tool, picking the 2:3 aspect ratio. The main aim was to crop out the tree on the extreme left, which is neither in nor out of the frame; but the ratio also removed some of the sky, which gave a more compact and more focused composition.
In the Basic tab, I dragged Highlights to -100 to restore some detail in the bright clouds. Just focusing on the sky, I then increased Temperature to 7000, reduced Exposure to -0.50, and jumped into the HSL tab to boost Saturation on the Blues to +35. I then dragged down a Graduated Filter with Exposure reduced to -0.50; on this I pushed Dehaze, Clarity and Temperature all to +20.
2 Balance exposure
With the sky detail in good shape, I clicked on the Hand tool to exit the Graduated Filter. Back in the Basic tab, I pushed Shadows to +100 to bring up the foreground. This didn’t brighten it enough to balance the exposure, so I selected the Graduated Filter again; after dragging it over the foreground, I set Exposure to +0.50, Temperature to +20, and Clarity to +30.
The haze in the distance looked a little too pronounced, so to reduce this, I chose the Adjustment Brush, and set Dehaze to +30. I painted into the background, the face of El Capitan (left), and the Bridal Veil cliffs (right), but left some haze hanging above the trees in the middle of the image.
3 Add atmosphere
The pic was taking shape really well, but to add extra light and shade to the rather uniform foreground, I selected the Radial Filter. Before beginning with it, I scrolled down to the bottom of the panel to make sure the tool was set to Inside. I clicked on the + icon next to the Temperature slider to zero the other sliders, then set the value to +30. I pushed the Exposure slider to +0.70, Highlights to +25 and Whites to +25.
I dragged out an oval shape to ‘light’ the trees at the bottom-right, then right-clicked on the pin and chose Duplicate to copy the effect. I dragged this to light the hillside of the left, then scattered a few more light pools on the scene in the same way. I placed the final duplicate in the centre of the pic, over the trees – but on this one, I decreased the Temperature to -20 and Dehaze to -20 to create a soft blue mist in the valley.