Trillium Glow

(This image has a lot of shadows; it will likely look better if you click on the version above to see the larger version on a darker background.)
 
When I am able to get out and photograph, like many photographers I spend a lot of time setting up for sunrises and sunsets, and then living in hope that the light will cooperate. Here in the Pacific Northwest it’s an exercise in patience; we get a lot of gray mornings and evenings. Every time nature does cooperate, I feel truly blessed to be able to participate.
 
I took this image the morning after my prior post, and it was one of the stronger “glows” that I can remember photographing. The sun was rising behind my right shoulder, and the color overhead was pretty intense. I remember looking at my hands as I was operating the camera and thinking, “Huh, they look really red.” The camera’s auto white balance compensated by setting the temperature to 3750 and the tint to -12; I pulled it from RAW using the Daylight setting for white balance. (I typically do that for sunrises and sunsets.) I’ll post what the Adobe RAW image looked like below, prior to Photoshop, with that Daylight setting and all the sliders, etc., set to zero.
 
My normal workflow is to process contrast in RGB, then color in LAB, and then back to RGB for final tweaking. I really like the power that LAB has to boost color contrast (and it’s really easy to restrict changes to certain colors if desired), but that same power can be too much in a heavily saturated image. I rarely skip LAB, but I did in this one; I was happier with the results just staying in RGB.
 
I realize it’s controversial, but I also “lifted” the mountain and its reflection a little here. My eye sees with a 50mm equivalent, and while there the mountain is just massive right in front of me. The camera’s wide-angle field of view does great things for the foreground, but really robs how dominant a distant landscape feature is.

Also, per feedback on my prior post, I took out the snag on the far shore.
 
Nikon D7100
Nikon 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 at 12 mm (18mm equiv.)
1/8 at f/8.0 and ISO 100