Shutter-life|Adaptive photography and more, by Henrik Johansson

This is a shot of the Mercury Atlas rocket at the Rocket Garden, Kennedy Space Center. It was this rocket/capsule combination that brought John Glenn on Friendship 7 into orbit on February 20, 1962. The light was very harsh, making it almost impossible to get a good shot. When I started working with this one, I never thought the result would be something that I could actually show to other people. However, just a few very simple steps completely transformed the shot. First, I decreased the exposure with about one step and pushed both the fill light and recovery sliders to the max. This turned the blown highlights into something that actually looks like the sun (but it isn’t, the sun was much smaller). Next, I increased the color temperature quite a bit. Finally, I added the usual yellow/red tone to the highlights (about 50 on slider). Finally I did some minor tweaking using the tone curve, clarity, vibrance and saturation. I performed a minor crop and rotation. Looking at the original below, I find it hard to believe that it’s actually the same shot.