I had been at Pearson Field to do some photography for an aviation history project I am doing. Right next door is Fort Vancouver and with my interest there was no way I was going home without stopping by the fort.

When I walked in to the blacksmith shop I immediately saw the potential for this shot and was very excited about it. It took ISO 6400 to make it work, but that didn’t bother me that much as I felt I could use significant noise reduction without it damaging the shot relative to look I wanted. The light was such in the room, overall very dark but with a window or two and the fire, that I expected to have almost this look straight out of the camera. However, my 5dII handled the shadow detail so well in this instance that what I actually got was this.

Therefore, I started with this image in Lightroom increasing contrast a great deal and darkening the image especially the shadow a lot. Then I opened the image in Color Efex Pro4 and ran the Bleach Bypass Portrait recipe. The Bleach Bypass filter needed a little customization in brightening the image a tad, but that was all the customization necessary.

Here is a gallery of the rest of my Fort Vancouver Images. All are available for wall art and editorial licensing, some are available for all uses.