Looking back at this photo from a year ago, I was surprised at how short a hop it was from the original image to my current edit. A photograph that appears radically manipulated usually is, but this was a case when I took what I captured and subtly enhanced it. It’s still highly manipulated, but in small ways.
Because of the overcast skies near Juneau, Alaska, the pictures in this sequence were all low-contrast and nearly monochromatic –a dull gray.
The basic choice I made in editing was to push the image toward brightness while boosting the colors that were already in the image. My changes revealed detail in the whale’s tail, abstracted the water, painted the hills purple and blue with flecks of other colors, and shifted the overall tone to silver.
This photo looks fantastic printed on metallic paper with a white mat.
