I went out at the end of the day to a location at Cal Poly Pomona on top of a parking garage so that I could shoot my Jeep with a dramatic backdrop of sunset and clouds. I was watching the sun dip toward the horizon and was hoping the clouds would be aligned with the setting sun and I wouldn’t be too late.

F/8, SS 1/500, ISO 80, at 16mm

Fuji XH2

I knew that the image would be incredibly dark, even shooting into the sun, and that the subject would be backlit. This meant that the Jeep would be very, very dark and I would need to recover the shadows in post-processing.

That’s the first image. And here is the result after lifting shadows in Capture One.

The foreground, of course, was much brighter with the shadows lifted, so I added a linear gradient that made the ground darker, so the eye would be drawn to the Jeep as the subject. Besides the majestic flaring of the sun through the clouds, I like the little flare of sun reflecting off the parking lot under the Jeep behind the driver side front wheel.