I originally edited this photo not long after returning from Disneyland and then just sat on it. I didn’t like it at all. I’m still not a huge fan of the purple and green mountains (it makes no sense!!!!) but I didn’t want to let this photo get the best of me. Knowing that my main problems with the shot lie with my original edit and feeling motivated by Gregg Cooper sharing his version with me, I set to work on editing the shot again from scratch.
I won’t go deep into the details of the edit, but I do want to mention one trick I utilized when shooting this shot that helped with the editing. The lights at the bottom were causing quite a bit of flaring across the middle and sky of the scene. Since I noticed this when shooting I took an additional long exposure but used my hand to block the lights from the lens. I was then able to mask in the non-flared section quickly and easily. This is a trick I also use when shooting directly into the sun to eliminate unwanted flaring.