Taken on Glen Coe in the Scottish Highlands. I’m not sure what it was that bit the dust on the moorland, but it had feathers, and had been picked clean.
This one was processed using the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop - lots of really heavy dodging and burning.
I’ve been back from a week long trip to the Scottish Highlands for almost a month now, and I’m still processing the shots I took out there.
I’ve been DISGUSTED with my images lately and having undertaken a bout of self flagellation with the strap from my Canon, I resolved to do something about the robotic way I was churning through my post processing worklow.
To break the rot I decided to put my old routines on the shelf for the time being and put my mind to learning some new techniques. After doing a bit of digging around on the internet, looking for inspiration, I quickly got sidetracked with a few Ansel Adams stories that had been doing the rounds on the blogosphere (Really good NY Times feature with Adams’ former assistant Andrea G. Stillman - More interesting Ansel Adams links from the always excellent John Nack on Adobe blog).
Adams is a constant inspiration for any landscape photographer, and as I read through the articles and took in Adams’ images, the decision to make a run at the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop solidified in my recently flagellated mind.
It’s not been easy - using the dodge and burn tools is very different to my usual method of selectively curving and leveling areas of an image. I find I’m having to learn all over again how to approach the images, and how to apply the changes I want to make.
I’ve always admired the way some artists use the brush tool to paint images in Photoshop, and always thought to myself ‘I could never do that’. Not only do I not have the ability to form and layer up virtual-paint in the way those chaps do, but the skill of using the mouse as a brush has always been something that I’ve steered well clear of. Well, there’s no other way to use the dodge and burn tools, so that’s what I’ve been learning, ever so slowly, while making ever so many mistakes and dodgy images, to do 
We’ll see how it goes. At the moment, the above image is pretty much the first one I’ve completed that I’m getting on for happy with. I’ll be sure to write up my thoughts on how effective a technique it is in Photoshop soon.
