Apologies, after making the OP I moved on to remote areas where I had real poor Wi-Fi. So posting in forums was too difficult. I'm home now, and thanks, I really appreciate all the comments, especially MimiVivi. I try to get accurate color and tone first, then move on to "pleasing". I wear prescription eyeglasses, and use flip-up sun shades. When in these Italian "hill towns" I'm flipping those sun shades up and down constantly. So, in this and many cases, I'm judging the sun lit highlights thru the sun shades and the lower shadows without. The Adaptive Color profile gave the best render of what I saw that way. Sure, without the sun shades the highlights would look much brighter, even blown out.
I could have got there with my normal profile by rendering multiple versions and using some fairly difficult and complicated luminosity masks. But the Adaptive Color profile saved a lot of that work. For what it's worth, here is my final version. But even it will probably get redone, since in the field I'm working on a laptop with a small good but not great screen. Also, for what it's worth, the Adaptive Color profile worked for me on only a small percentage of images.
With every photograph we take, we're always exploring answers for two broad questions:
(1) what is the subject of the image I'm about to take?
(2) how does light help me say what I want to say about it? What does the light I have enable me to say, at all?
So you know, when I look at an image like the above, as the audience,
I think the subject of the image is the architectural space; the confines and contours of it; the experience of being in this tight little spot in shade below with the sunlight streaming in from above. And light tells the story of that experience so beautifully: the way It steams in, the angle (illustrated right before us!) illuminating just the upper section of side wall. It doesn't penetrate to the ground, which tells us so much about what it's like to stand on that spot. The way the light streams tells us about the height of the walls above us, the open-shade climate below. The way the light doesn't touch you. Just out of reach. The way it draws your eye (and thus your camera!) UP! This is meaningful stuff!
Now, if you were processing this image with that understanding of it, you'd do everything you could to point out that the light side is direct-sun bright and the relative darkness is . . . relatively dark! (As we all know: the actual EV difference between direct sun and open shade is usually about 3 stops.) So you'd make sure that distinction was fairly clear! (Which your original take does--the top image in your original post's three.) Because that's the point of the image: the experience of standing in this beautiful spot in the open shade, with the sky streaming in warm above you. The image isn't about the infinite detail or texture of any particular point of any wall. It isn't about the light side of the space being the same color or texture or tone as the dark sides. It's about the difference between them. Light and shade change perceptions of color and tone and texture. This image is about experiencing that. It isn't abstract; it isn't an architectural drawing. Nobody ever walks through an architectural drawing; but you walked through this. You were there! At this moment. You lived it. The photo is about
that. The way the light streams in is a marker of time and moment, about feeling of being confined by this beautiful architecture in this particular way in this amazing moment.
And I can already hear you saying, perhaps: "Um! Mimi! That's not at all what this image is about! This image is about the blue mural! It's right there in front!!!"
But that can't be true. That can't be true because that's not the story the light helps you tell. The light cuts across the mural in a way that makes it hard to appreciate consistently, even if you flatten luminosities out. (Nobody would ever photograph a painting in a museum by cutting light across it this way.) Light is your medium. It's your paint. You can't work against it or "despite" it. As a photographer, light is all you got!
Maybe you're saying, "this image can be about BOTH things, about the experience of being there with the light streaming into this space above me, but ALSO about the mural." And what I'm suggesting here (I know, sheesh, "everyone's a critic!") is that you can't have it both ways
and have a powerful photograph. If you flatten the light to save the detail, you soft-pedal the beauty and moment and meaning the light actually gave you. The sun and the architecture and the angle the light stream in is in charge of this moment, and it isn't giving you a story that's about the mural, beautiful though it may be.
Photography follows the light. We're light writers! Photographers tell stories using light. The story is what the light shows you. And sometimes, the light isn't shining on the obvious thing in the most obvious way. Sometimes you shake your fist and it and say, HEY PAL, can you just shift a little to the right up there in the cosmos and shine on this beautiful thing right here? But alas: our art is about being perceptive and creative with the light the sun gives us; and barring that, it's about being crafty with reflectors, flags, strobes and speedlites. Light is our thing; every other tool in the box exists to serve the light we wrote.
Ultimately, I don't think the good ol' sun did you wrong, here. Yes, it cut across a beautiful mural in a way that even Adobe's mighty tech can't honestly help you "recover" (whatever that word really means in this sense). But the mural isn't the story; the story is the space, the experience of it, and this particular moment of being there--and
it's a great story. I dig it, truly. We don't need to "recover" every detail of this space to know the moment is beautiful or to feel it. The light washing some of the color and tone . . . is part of the better story! It's part of feeling it! And that's kind of the "auxiliary" moral of this dumb criticism I'm offering: there's always a story the light gives us. Sometimes the hardest part of our craft is just noticing it! Or, if you do notice it (which you absolutely did), it's having confidence in it, believing that it's a good story to tell. Believing that it doesn't need to be "fixed" or "recovered" or "re-engineered" into a different one. Well friend, you should have confidence in this one. I'm telling you. At least one person thinks so. Don't flatten it out, man. Don't soft-pedal it. Tell it.
Having now said my peace, I just ask everyone not get too upset, right? Remember the important obligatory disclaimer that needs to follow any post like this one: all of this is just one girl's opinion, you know? She's a nut and kind of an idiot, for that matter. It's offered with a shrug on a no-harms-no-fouls basis, right? Ignore the stuff you don't like and do your thing your way.
ANYHOO: the photo's great shot. I dig it, I do.
Cheers!
