Have you ever felt like one element of your photography runs away from the rest? This seems to be a constant problem for me, and this image is a great example.
I shot this image in 2014 with my Olympus EM5 micro 43 camera and the Olympus 12-40 lens at 12mm. It’s a tripod mounted exposure of 1.3 seconds at ISO200 and f/10. I should point out that I was using f/10 as a way of slowing the shutter speed as I didn’t have any ND filters with me. Fortunately, I did have a two stop ND Graduate which I placed on the sky.
Now the thing about this shot is that the sunset was spectacular with an intensity that you don’t often see. Everything and I mean everything around me was glowing pink and that’s where my problems began. Trying to process something like this is extremely difficult and I made a bit of a mess of things several times. I may have had the skills to capture the image, but I didn’t know how to process it. I just couldn’t represent the amazing sunset yet at the same time keep things looking believable.
In the end I gave up on the challenge until this week. That’s when I came across the RAW files again and thought I would have another try. This time I think my photo editing skills have caught up with my imagination and I’ve managed something that I’m happy with and that I hope you like.
Have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Hi Robin, I am having the same problems with processing. Currently trying nik(again). Brian
It’s frustrating isn’t it. I usually find waiting a few years before processing an image helps. Unfortunately, that’s not a workable solution.