I took a picture of a romantic place in Durham (England). You can see it here -- <http://www.badongo.com/pic/5470867?size=original>
I think there are things that can be done in Photoshop to improve this picture and do justice to the beautiful scene - for example, somehow accentuate the dramatism of the water reflections, or add lighting effects that can maybe compensate for the less-than-ideal time of the day when the picture was taken.
The first step would be to find the right cropping for the picture, my idea was something like this -- <http://www.badongo.com/pic/5470940?size=original>
Then, of course, a certain number of processing steps. I will try to put my rudimentary Photoshop skills to work and see what comes out, but I could really use and appreciate it if anyone would like to try their hand at this too. I want both to put this picture in a better light, and also get a tiny bit better at PS in the process. Some of the effects I had in mind are Light Source, Blur and PhotoFilter; and I'm sure there are a lot others that I don't know (or don't use creatively enough) that could be applied with nice results in this case. Once again, I'd be happy to receive any visual suggestions. Thanks in advance!
It's difficult to avoid blowing out the highlights in scenes like this without underexposing the shadows. Still, careful adjustments can bring out shadow detail.
My suggestion here would be to work with luminosity masks. Press ctrl+alt+2. This loads a selection of the bright values, while dark values are gradually less selected.
Keep the selection active, and then go to the adjustments panel and make a Curves adjustment layer. A layer mask, "containing" your selection, is created with it. This means that your adjustments will affect the high values more than the low. Invert the mask - ah, well, illustrating it is easier than describing it:
<http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1en07sVdHX6EgHhsW5ELiZF7UasDn1>
You might try the reverse for the sky (but slightly!). I wouldn't do very much more, except select the reflections in the water and bring the specular highlights up to pure white (which they aren't).
and a screenshot showing the layers
http://xs537.xs.to/xs537/09110/yy_106-screenshot563.jpg