Aloha,
Ok; I never liked this image, the composition is way off and the rock in the foreground especially bothered me just hanging there, but cropping it out took away from the small fallen leaves on the left which I really did like.
There were some fresh cut logs near the base of the small falls and up on the right, all that had tone cloned over, I actually made a new rock to cover the one log.
Its a shame I did not take more time to work at that location, as it really had potential, I should have gone a few steps down and gotten in the middle of the water/stream to balance out the falls.
I used high-tech stacked grads, which alway give things a tint, even when you work out the tint the image is affected.
But too many people started to show up, this is an easy place to get to (once you get to the ends of the earth) and I was with a group of people that i met up in the valley, and they were not photographers, and I could see they wanted to go.
That was my first mistake, and broke a long standing rule of mine, don't go anywhere to work with other people, its too much of a distraction.
So anyways, I never planned to do much with this shot, and if I ever go back to Patagonia, its not on my list to do over...
Funny story about that day;
In El Chaltan, the place where you can stock up and where you start your hike into the valley, there are a good number of local dogs that pretty much wander around, they hang out by the restaurants, waiting for scraps or a scratch on the head, they are pretty friendly and cool. the day we hiked to El Salto, this big dirty white dog was hanging out by were my friends and I gathered to start our hike. I had met this dog before, and given him some leftovers, so he seems pretty happy to see me again, once we started our hike, he just tagged along, doing dog stuff, running ahead to make sure the coast was clear and smelling everything to see what was up, he was as excited about the hike as we were.
El Chaltan is outside the national park, as you hike down the road, at some point, you enter the national park, there are signs posted, entering Los Glacier National Park. On the signs are posted the things you can't do; no fires, stay on the trail, do not litter, bring out your trash, stuff like that, and also on the list; NO DOGS!
The big scruffy white dog, who had been eagerly hiking right along with us approached the sign ahead of us; slowed and sat down precisely in front of the sign. We approached the sign and walked pasted it, walked into the park, past the invisible boarder. Right away the dog, started to whine in that baleful lost sad dog whine, it knew it could go no further, but was begging us for some sort of sign that it could join us! As much as he wanted to, he was not breaking his training, but you could almost read his thoughts; man one day I'm going! I really really want to check that place out, whats everybody going there for!
4 hours later when we hiked back out, he was there to greet us and happily walked back into town with us, where he helped us finish our lunch and got his ears scratched.