As I pass through Las Vegas on my way to Arizona for the warm winter months, I cant help but stop in Vegas and do a little shooting. This image is from the Fremont Street area, which has been totally revitalized since my first visit to Las Vegas in 1985. 

One of the cool things they have been doing here is preserving the old neon signs from hotels and motels that are no longer standing. So right outside the Fremont Experience areas are these awesome old signs and symbols. 

nv_vegas_fremont_st_MG_4968

So I shot the old sign, hand held by the way, and opened in ACR where I added a little contrast, lightened shadows, tiny bit of Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation. Then I opened in Photoshop and added several luminosity masks for shadows and highlights. 

This allowed me to darken a few areas, lighten specific areas, and then selectively saturate more specifics. Then I straightened the angles and removed a light pole that was in the shots and Voila!

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All the best!

A month ago on the return trip from Canada’s NW Territories, I was zipping down the east side of Glacier NP in Montana when this event happened. The sun peeked out and I stopped, grabbed the camera and ran up a hill to get above the trees. It’s a hand-held and I started with HDR processing and applied that lightly and then did more exposure blending from the original RAW file.

The goal was to not have a sky that was over saturated and darker than the foreground or it would look unreal. I think I pushed right up to the fence so to speak as this has the look of a graduated ND filter.

mt_east_side_glacier_np_MG_6040_1_2_tonemapped

 

See the Photoshop layers below