By the Dawn’s Early Light, originally uploaded by Photography by Odille.
Another shot from my 2008 dawn trip. Now I know more about editing I can finally get these to look the way I’d always envisaged. The rays were really strong but they came up very flat in my initial editing, but then I only had PS Elements version 3!
Photography by Odille's Blog 
Hey man
i watch your blog all the time , got any recommendations on learning more about editing , im not getting my edits that way i want and end up just giving up
Very good Odille! Love the leading lines of the road.
Cheers
Glad you like it, David & Tim.
Tim, your shots look pretty good already!
I now use Capture One 5 for my RAW conversions, as it gives me far more control over anything else I’ve tried, often the result will be ready to go once that is all you have done. The Highlight and Shadow control it gives is wonderful.
When I use Adobe Camera Raw I always carefully adjust White Balance and Exposure, I’ll fiddle with them for quite a while to get it just right. I find the care taken at this stage pays off.
In PS itself I use adjustment layers for sharpening (High Pass/Soft light mode/ 60-75%) and delete the parts I don’t want sharp.
I also use curves quite a lot, levels to a lesser extent and almost always finish with a Vibrance layer.
Where colour adjustment is necessary I do separate Saturation layers for each colour I want to have a play with, for instance the Autumn one at Kaikoura Golf Course has 5 different Saturation layers for 5 colours.
And I subscribed to Peter Eastway’s online Masterclasses which has taught me a great deal about post production processing. I love his work, and while I might not always have processed the image the way he does, I learn a hell of a lot watching how he does it. I thoroughly recommend them.
Go to http://www.betterphotography.com/index.php and click on Masterclass – there is a free ‘taster’.
Cheers