I remember walking up some stairs at the South Bank Center in London when I was young. They had an exhibition of original Ansel Adams photographs that had been printed by the great man. I recall walking up the entrance stairs into the exhibition and at the top was a giant print of Half Dome. It blew me away! It was so real that you could reach out, touch it, and feel the cold rough stone!

I've always spoken about this when giving my talks. It was the moment that created the motivation for me to pick up a camera.

This lock down has afforded me the chance to revisit previous colour images I have taken. Needless to say there is a lot of crap in the archives, but every so often there is one that causes me to stop and imagine. For me though, it is a surprise to find something that I have passed over so many times and yet with the current situation, time helped to slow things down!

What can I say about the processing of this image? Well, the work started with a simple change to the levels to bring the exposure, contrast, and tonal range to a place I liked. Then, within CaptureOne (I don't use any Adobe products these days), I adjusted the Shadows and Highlights to bring them closer together with a view of reducing the range. If you look at Ansel Adam's work Nevada Fall, Rainbow, Yosemite, I had that sort of eventual feel I wanted to bring out of my image.

Next, after a little dust removal, it was time to export to an old copy of Nik Silver Efex Pro. Some more work in there, tinkering really, and the above is the result.

Enjoy, and go look in your archives! Lock down is a time to play...