Telegraph Hill and Tower, by and © monkeytime.

The 5D kit did not lend itself well to traipsing around San Francisco this month – or maybe I just didn’t lend myself well to carrying the load. At times I wished I had only my little Powershot, but, then, there would have been shots I couldn’t have gotten, like this one. I shot this just a few minutes short of Noon, against significant glare, which was compounded by shooting through an office building window.

In addition to shooting with the polarizing filter I made the following major adjustments in Lightroom:

• Preset: Punch (which, among other things, pushes Clarity to 50),
• Increased Contrast and Point Curve set to Strong Contrast,
• Increased Color Saturation, and
• Blue channel Luminance set to zero.

Beyond general improvement of the image, the primary reason for these adjustments was to bring out the blue/gray of the sky and the contrasting whites of the clouds. Of course, I could have held a polarizing filter in front of the point-and-shoot, but mine shoots only JPG, and I suspect that only in RAW could I have so easily drawn down blue luminance.