I thought I’d share the basic steps I took to turn my camera image of the Tree Trimmer into the final image. I took this image while visiting Duke Gardens. I actually went back after first seeing the worker as I decided I really wanted an image of him cutting the top off the tree. I did get that shot, but decided that I liked him removing the next section better as there were fewer branches to obstruct the view of the worker. I spent about 30 minutes watching him work and taking pictures from different spots. Here is the image I started with, basically straight out of the camera, with no edits. As you can see, the image is pretty good, with isolation and pretty good contrast, etc. Next, I played around in Lightroom for a while and decided I liked the look of higher tonal contrast applied to the image. I used a preset for this, but the main changes were to bump Clarity, Shadows and Whites, while pushing down Contrast, Highlights and Blacks. As shown below. Here is the image w...