The adage for shooting slide film was always “expose for the highlights, develop for the shadows,” because slides had the same problem digital sensors had, even with many stops less dynamic range. The highlights, once gone, are super gone. Gone forever. The shadows, you could burn in while printing and get extra out of them.
I did that here in the first photo (although my edges aren’t perfect, this is a blog post not the MOMA). I exposed probably a stop and a half under what the meter was reading, and got the detail in the clouds. The rest, for the most part, was gotten in post, two separtate masks to get the trees and river right. The trees that stick into the sky are the hardest to get right, and even though I’ve tried, they’re still not quite there. There’s probably some photoshop trickery to make it work that I don’t care enough about to learn.
Sophie, sans makeup, being very tolerant of my bullshit.
