Thanks for the compliment! I am always amazed at how much detail is hidden in RAW files.

That really is fascinating, John. I’ve tried my hand at panning for gold at a local theme park once – South Africa at one time was the world’s leading gold producer – and my lacking skills in that endeavour makes me doubt that, if I lived in Skagway even at the height of the rush, I would’ve ever had enough gold for a poke (literally and figuratively)…

I learned about the term, “a pinch in a poke”. Ladies got paid from miners by being allowed to reach into the miner’s poke, his small bag of gold dust. They could keep what they pinched. Ladies would spend time pressing a hard pea between thumb and forefinger for hours at a time. That put a semi-permanent pocket between their fingers allowing them to pinch a larger amount of gold. So I was told, anyway.

Some of the ladies were probably legendary, their fame known far and wide? Here in South Africa during the gold rush to the town of Barberton in the 1880’s a lady named Cockney Liz became an “attraction” almost as widely known at the time as the gold…

Yes, layers and masking is a good first thing, if that gives you enough.

Lightroom’s HDR tool works beautifully most of the time. When my 1-stop brackets aren’t quite enough, I then resort to layers and masking, as I ended up doing in the boa and hat area.

That’s something I should start doing. I get into much more bothersome work with colour decomposition and layer mixing without it.

Thank you!