As much as I like getting the image 100% perfect in the field, there are times when, when reviewing them later, they just don’t seem to have the spirit they had when I originally captured them.   I’ll download them to my computer, and they will sometimes sit there for a while until I decide what I want to do with them.  As I have written before, sometimes the image really wants to be a black-and-white shot, whether I consciously or unconsciously decide that at the moment of the shutter release.

For this blueberry image, I was really drawn into the different tones each berry took on as it ripened.   But the overall shot, as is, had a pretty brilliant green background competing for those tonal values, as well as a scattering of other elements I wanted downplayed.   So my goal was emphasize the different tones of the berries while downplaying everything else.   I ended up with this result, which isn’t a lot of tweaking on the grand scheme of things – no content changes, just some layering to select what I wanted the emphasis to be on.   I am much happier with this image than I was with the one straight out of the camera, and to me, these tweaks released the true spirit of what I was after in the first place.