Having a huge archive of photos is something I enjoyed even before the arrival of Covid19. Revisiting places and moments has always been a great way to spend an evening or two. Although the RAW images are still the same, it often happens that I discover something new. And suddenly, an overlooked opportunity or – as in this case – a re-interpretation can easily result in something worth sharing.

A few days ago I was reminded about this shot of the Moeraki Boulders at sunrise by a weird coincidence. Some kind of Instagram photo hub shared an old and slightly re-edited version of this image. Apparently they had taken it from my flickr photostream, but where kind enough to tag my instagram account in the post – and that was how I saw it. I was so shocked by seeing my own editing style from way back, that I immediately decided to dig in my archive and to give the image a complete overhaul (like I did with this shot of Fitz Roy at sunset).

I was done within a few minutes and it was funny to see how much more straight forward my editing has become. My first edit involved complex third party plug-ins applied in Photoshop, which – I have to admit – to a certain degree guided my editing and thus had a big effect on the overall feel of the image. The processing took forever and the result was not just unnatural, but plain ugly. Nowadays all my edits and adjustment follow my vision and the technology involved has been reduced to being a tool, used to reproduce a certain mood.