So I got me a new Canon 7D just 10 days ago.. I couldnt test it or try it out immediatley cuz I had some major school work to do and needed to prepare for my A.C.E exam.. BUT today some friends of mine had a music video to shoot for a class project and I was appointed job cameraman #3 with my 7D.. and it was beeeeaauuutttiiiful! Here are some images.. downsized a little for web.. the video footage will be uploaded soon when their project is finished in less than 2 weeks.

Keeping with today’s theme “internal auditors are not risk managers”, here’s something I quite enjoyed courtesy of a report from Marsh in New Zealand called The 2008 State Sector Risk Management Practices Report. Page 17 it reads:

Internal Auditors play an important role in evaluating the risk management processes of an organisation and advocating their continued improvement.

However, to preserve its organisational independence and objective judgement, Internal Audit professional standards indicate the function should not take any direct responsibility for making risk management decisions for the enterprise or managing the risk management function.

Internal auditors typically perform an annual risk assessment of the enterprise, to develop a plan of audit engagements for the upcoming year. This plan is updated at various frequencies in practice. This typically involves review of the various risk assessments performed by the enterprise (e.g., strategic plans, competitive benchmarking, and top-down risk assessment), consideration of prior audits, and interviews with a variety of senior management. It is designed for identifying audit projects – not to identify, prioritise, and manage risks directly for the enterprise.

Gilbert Harrison - distracted by bird

A man who was rich/dumb/ignorant enough to purchase a car for $1 million proceeded to relieve it of its operating capabilities by crashing it into a Texas salt marsh two weeks later.

If being dumb enough to crash your car into a lake, he’s blaming it on the fact that a bird distracted him…and that, because of the bird, he dropped his cell phone and was leaning over to pick it up. During that process, he may have taken his eyes off the road, and drove the car into a salt marsh (don’t worry; it wasn’t deep, as shown by the picture above).

While the man does look like a beached walrus riding a sea-horse while sitting on his car waiting to be rescued, I beg the question: how did the pelican startle the man enough to cause him to not only drop his cell phone, but crash his car into a man-made lake in the middle of southern Texas?

Let’s check out the culprits.

1)      The Bird – This beautiful pelican was soaring through the crisp, America blue Texas sky, patrolling the salt marshes for fish that, most likely, were not there because of the excess salt in the water (Dead Sea anyone)? Upon seeing this beautiful creature, the man was so entranced by it, that he dropped his cell phone and, like a fly to a bug zapper, just drove his car towards the bird flying high into the air and nose diving for fish that, most likely, were not in a salt marsh.

2)     The cell phone – The cell phone, because of its constant usage – or maybe because of its own entrancement of the bird – began to heat up by over usage (or pure lust for the pelican beak), burning the man’s hand, causing him to drop the phone. In an attempt to cool it, he ripped his hand through the dash-board to get to the cold Freon running through his A/C. Sadly, in doing so, he broke the drive shaft, rendering the car unsteerable, and proceeded to coast into the salt marsh

3)     The man (most likely scenario) – The fat man, while on the cell phone with a McDonald’s franchise (as he wanted to buy it) and greaseball burger in his other hand, steering with his knees, blasting Denis Leary, was taunting a hungry pelican by holding the burger out the window. The pelican saw the bait and swooped in for it, actually putting the man’s hand in its beak, but the man was able to drop his cell phone and reach out the window to punch the bird in the throat to free his hand. Realizing that free fast food was being lost on the phone, he reached below his dashboard, – taking his eyes off of the road – and slightly turned towards the marsh. Returning to the sitting position, he realized he left his burger in full view of the damned bird, who was now playing chicken with his car. In fear of the bird damaging his million dollar car, he swerved to try to avoid God’s creature, crashing his money pit into a salt marsh.

 While what actually happened may never come to light, one question might never be know: How did a guy THAT fat fit into a car THAT small?

 The world may never know, but I bet he knows how many licks it takes to get to the center of s Tootsie Pop.

Explore the beautiful tidal creeks and marshes of Glynn in a comfortable pontoon boat. Interpretive tour includes sightseeing, ecology, history, and birding. Tours can be customized for home school curriculum compliance or Scout badge fulfillment. Tours are offered year-round with USCG licensed captains to make your trip a safe and unforgettable experience. You may take your own private tour at any time. We will fit into your schedule. We have no set departure times, although we can recommend a time of the tide according to what you want to see or do. Low tide is best to see birds and oysters, while high tide is best to have a view across the marsh. For more information please visit the Embassy Suites Brunswick Guide

…. local marsh on a spring morning.

Look for pictures on their own page – click on “Pictures 2Go”

Map View of Caillou Lake (Credit: Google/BrainyGeograpy)

Caillou “Sister” Lake Land Bridge

The above link will redirect you to a fact sheet on the Caillou “Sister” Lake Land Bridge Project created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This project is located in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana (38 miles southeast of Morgan City, LA). The project area is inbetween the lake and the Gulf of Mexico. The point of the project is to decrease the severe marsh degradation between Caillou Lake and the Gulf of Mexico. Although this project is extremely vital to the conservation of Louisiana’s coast, I feel that this project should expand east and west (along the eroding coast) instead of only focusing on creating a more sufficient buffer between the Gulf of Mexico and Caillou Lake. Does anyone have thoughts, opinions, or questions regarding this project and/or post?

Old Salty Fence

week twelve…

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out

And to whom I was like to give offence.”  ~ Frost

The above quote is from a Robert Frost poem entitled: Mending Wall.  It has always been a favorite of mine and was one of the poems I chose to memorize for my final exam while studying creative writing at Eckerd College.  The narrator of the piece is walking an old stone wall with his neighbor: each picking up the felled boulders.  While they are at their work each man’s opinion of why the wall is there is revealed and the above quote is from the broad minded narrator who doesn’t believe in the necessity of a wall.

This photo was taken on the south end of Hazard Rd.  in Newport.  All last year they were re-doing the road and installing a drainage system to the salt pond that extends to Green Bridge.  Up until last year this road was just that: a hazard.  A good road or reason to pop it into 4wd and mud up the side of your truck.  Now there is a perfectly paved road.  I’m not mad though, the water flows back and forth to either side of the road, flushes the marsh and already has brought much life back the pond.  For most of my time out there today I was shooting pictures of ducks and I have a few good ones but as I tired with shooting mallards I shouldered my tripod and camera and walked the road to see what else there was to see.  And I’m happy that I went exploring for I found this fence and from the looks of it, it doesn”t seem like it has much of a timeline left…

Photo

The sun is just rising along the Salt Marsh Trail when the sound of geese begins to float in from the north.  They are waking up just beyond the island and preparing for flight.

Moments later, their distant honking turns into a loud roar.  What are they calling out to each other as they head out to sea?

Their numbers are in the thousands and it’s impossible to photograph them all in the sky.  To see so many geese flying directly overhead at dawn is an awesome experience.  The rays of dawn light up their feathers, revealing the beauty of their markings.

Their formations are like ribbons in the sky as they begin to organize themselves for their long journey south.

Within a couple of minutes, the event is over as they head out beyond the marsh to the Atlantic.  The sun is still rising beyond the horizon.

Forty minutes later, a lone goose can be heard flying around the marsh.  Its calls are distinct and clearly those of a Canada goose.  How did it possibly miss the wake up call? 

Its unanswered calls sound lonely and frantic.  Geese are known for their manner of leaving no goose behind.  How could this have happened?  Hopefully there will be more geese passing through here this week and this lone goose will be able to join the rest of its kind in their long journey south.

 Receive by email or subscribe in a reader

Drawing Water over Parson's Marsh

Happy Sunday!

For full effect you should view this image larger than it is here. Click it and it will open in a new window. There are size controls at the top.

By the time I got out yesterday afternoon, we were rapidly loosing the light. Clouds were coming and we had an early sunset as they built in from the west. I always love the sun drawing water effect, and have caught it several times this fall. Must be something in the air.

Drawing water shots are, however, among the most difficult to expose. It is really a very delicate effect: obvious to the naked eye…but the eye has such a huge range of light sensitivity compared to any capture medium, and certainly compared to a digital sensor. It is just not possible to capture the scene the way it really looks.

Sony DSC H50 at 31mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Programmed Auto, tipped up to meter the sky.

So you expose, as I did here, for the sun-rays, and everything else goes unnaturally dark. You can recover some of the natural look in post-processing with curves and levels and selective exposure compensation, but you never get quite there. Personally, I generally decide on the dramatic look…dark and intense…and then second think and go back for a more natural treatment, as I did here.

In Lightroom, I used two Graduated Filter effects, one from the bottom to lighten the foreground, and one from the top to darken the clouds and sky. I also applied a good deal of Fill Light to bring out some color in the marsh grasses in the mid-ground. Blackpoint just a touch right for intensity. Added Clarity and Vibrance for the drawing water effect. Sharpen Landscape preset.

From Around Home: Kennebunk ME.

See accompanying video here: While. Waiting. To. Explode. – Calling the Crows

On The
Walk, Video, Afternoon:

Brisk, cold wind pushes us as we search out new places on the inner trails of the island.  We walk from home over Covey’s land to Little Trot John Park.  Pass by horse with the sharpest, most cutting eyes i have ever seen.  I don’t know the names of any of the horses boarded in the barns back there but i always stop and try to talk to them.  The one we passed on our way out to explore kept trying to eat my hand thinking i brought a carrot.  He was smaller, young looking, dark but not really black or brown.  Cole left me trying to get to know this horse, continuing ahead.

I caught up and we walked up and around into part of the Park where a few people on the island have gotten together to start a community garden.  It looked as though they were trying to kill the grass in a 30×40 section of land with cardboard piled a top with mulch.  There was a a decent rug too, in one spot.  There was no mulch on the rug.  We walked through the dieing grass, and down towards the transfer station in order to head into the marshy woods situated across from it.

It was the end of the trail we had blazed yesterday when we entered the woods higher on Brackett Street.  We were aiming to find another way back onto a trail we had already travelled.  We passed these amazing marsh plants that look like the above water version of sea anemones.  They were visibly succulent, low, flowering, yellowish green, with reddish buds — beautifully squishy islands in the marshy areas.  It was unfortunate to stomp on them, and i kept thinking of how maybe we should be trying to protect them more (instead of stomping them.)  Still we used them for stepping stones through the parts that were hard to navigate due to the stranglehold of the invasive barberry and bittersweet.

We meet back up with the marked trail that, we guess, the Peaks Island Land Preserve maintains.  The trail is marked with three vertical dots in white spray paint about 8 feet up on a tree lining the path.  A man we ran into yesterday had been going over these blazes with glow in the dark spray paint, he said, so his wife could walk the path at night.  It was a very remarkable gesture to witness.

Today, an even more remarkable gesture occurred.  As we walked up a branch of the trail we have yet to experience, we came across a wind chime.  It hung on one branch of a small tree that seemed to proclaim we had reached a high ground, a stopping point, a meditation spot.  However, in all of its perfectness, it had lost three of its rods to worn out strings and they lay in the leaves, silent.  Cole thought this sad and wanted to do something.  I immediately thought we should take it home and fix it and bring it back.  He thought we could tie them back on right there.  This was attempted but to no avail as the strings simply needed to be replaced and were too short to tie up.  Therefore, my first thought prevailed and we decided we would take it home to fix and bring it back for whoever it belonged to enjoy anew.

Taking up the sturdy, rusted, metal crate i had slung a stick through and carried in one hand — the stick was warmer to carry than the metal itself — and the not worn through string the chimes were hanging from in the other, we continued.  The chimes jingled as we shuffled through leaves back out to the main road.  Cole said he thought they were happy.  They certainly sounded happy to be moving.  It re-affirmed my belief that most things are happier when they’re moving.   Maybe happiness is created in moving.  Even if that is not true or relevant at all to the chimes, they made wonderful sounds being carried through the November woods.

The crows thought so too.  Before long, there were caw ca CAWS flying towards us.  They lighted in the trees above us, and had corralled Heta back, possibly from the road as we were getting closer to cars.  They kept following us and cawing, and cawing, and flying above us all the way up to the road, and even then on the road some too.  The jingling chimes went with us and so did the crows.

We cut back over Brackett, back over to where Covey boards the horses leaving the crows behind, still cawing at us but not moving into different territory.  We were back in the horses territory and there was another really striking darker and slightly larger horse in the corral across from the one we saw on our way heading out.  This horse I wish I knew the name of.  He let us rub him a little and we would have stayed and spent more time but there was a man with two small dogs who were following our dog.  So we walked away from the horse whose name i wish i knew and he started whinnying at us to come back.  He whinnied until we were out of sight over the hill and i kept saying “bye” loud enough so he could hopefully hear, but i did feel bad we left him so quickly.

We began to talk about all the animals we had seen today and it dawned on me that when i did my medicine cards with my cousin in Utah a few years back i had pulled both a Crow and a Horse.  Also a Mouse (which eats pie i leave on the counter) a Butterfly (which we hatch) an Armadillo (which Cole and i just drew together)  a Lizard (orange salamander things in NH) and a Dolphin (Minke whale Cole and I saw sailing the sunfish last fall) and I think the last one was a Fox (i can’t find the piece of paper i wrote all of it down on) (Cole has a stunning photograph of a dead coyote which i think is a comparable animal.) There are eight animals in a totem which makes up your medicine cards (one pulled for each direction i.e. north, south, east, west, northeast, soutwest etc.)  You can only pull the cards once in your life, from what i remember.  In other words, the animals I picked in Salt Lake would be part of my totem everywhere, i would carry them within me my whole life.

It was just a thought that struck me on the end of our walk, how all the animals that we encounter through living on this island are ones that might be related to me somehow.  Possibly related to Cole as well.  The coyote and the crows i think are.  We need to find some medicine cards and he can draw them and find out.  Staying on track though, we walked home, the chimes were still sounding the whole way.

Deep Autumn on the Little River

Another not so easy exposure. I really wanted the wispy clouds in that very blue sky, so the foreground went dark. It took a Graduated Filter effect in Lightroom to bring it back up to where I am happy with it…but, oh, the sky!

I also cropped out some of the river in the foreground as it was too strong an element in the composition.

Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto. I tipped the camera up to meter more of the sky and locked exposure before reframing for composition.

As mentioned above, Graduated Filter and cropped in Lightroom. The GF effect was pulled up from the bottom to cover about 2/3s of the image. Added 60 Exposure, and some Clarity and Contrast. Added Clarity and Vibrance overall, Sharpen Landscape preset.

From Rachel Carson NWR Seasons.

Prime Hook Road, on the way out of Prime Hook Beach, Delaware

Sunset. Beautiful.

I have been working on a story for Wildlife in North Carolina magazine about barrier island migration. Every barrier island in the world is migrating. Its just the nature of these sandbars. As ocean levels rise, high tides are higher, and storm surges are farther reaching. With each overwash, sand is desposited onto the island. The storm surge the flooded out Hatteras Village during Hurricane Isabel deposited 2 meters of sand across the town! As this sand builds up, the elevation of the island grows as well. Yet sand is not static. Its shifting, moving, blowing, and constantly being rearanged. To say that change is the only constant on these barrier islands is not just some age old axiom but instead, a matter of physics.

As storms continue to pound the coast, as more overwash comes over the island, as hurricanes connect sea with sounds, sand is continualesly being transfered from the beach and the mid section of the island, to the waters behind it. Essentially, the islands roll overtop of themselves. This is barrier island migration in a somewhat oversimplified explanation.

Photographing for a story of this sort has proven to be quite the challenge. How does one go about photographically telling the story of long term geological processes? Stumps line the beaches of the Outer Banks as they do many other barrier islands. Trees however, do not grow out of the beach, therefore these are artifacts of islands migrating. Same thing with oyster shells along the Atlantic facing beaches. Oysters, like clams and welch snails (what you probably call conchs) do not grow in the ocean either. These are all esturiane species – meaning they live in estuaries, or the water behind the islands. The ended up on the beach because the islands migrated overtop of them and now thousands of years later they are being dug up out of the sand by wave action and tossed up onto the beach.

All of this is fine and dandy for telling a story with photographs, but to really explaine whats going on, you have to get off the island and up into the air. From the air this is no longer an abstract concept. The geography of the islands is a direct product of barrier island migration. The extensive marshes, the sand shoals, nearly every feature of the island has been shaped by this process. From the ground it is imperceptiable. From the air however it could not be more obvious.

Thus, I chartered a plane to fly me overtop of Ocracoke, Portsmouth Island, Core Banks, and Shackleford Banks. All of these save for the town of Ocracoke and the ghost town of Portsmouth are uninhabitated and therefore stand as the best examples.

Flying over these pecarious little ribbons of sand along our coast is quite educating, and a hell of alot of fun. From 1000 feet you really get the feel for just how unstable a landscape we live on out here. As for asthetics, words cannot describe it.

Along with this entry into the photo journal are a few of the photographs made while on this trip. These photos are not necessarily the ones that will acompany the article, but are some of the earthscapes and abstracts that I made while in the air.

Who's your daddy now? (courtesy:freebeez.com)

It’s SO friggin ON now.

Series tied at 2-2 .  India brandishing the kangaroos in 2 games and laying the proverbial turd in the other games. What can be said about an Aussie team which has 43232 front line bowlers on crutches, wheelchairs, medication, and therapy, AND YET manages to win games against a seemingly stronger opponent (on paper atleast) away ?  Pretty Cool.

So, while the stage is set for the big game in Hyderabad, Ponting comes out and plays the sympathy card:

“If you consider everything that’s happened to us over the last couple of weeks, it would be an amazing effort if this group of players were good enough to get over the line,” Ponting said in the Age. “I think we showed the other night that if we play even somewhere near our best we’re a really good chance of winning the series.

Yes sir, that is indeed pretty amazing.

MSD, on the other hand, should be a little upset that the series is tied at this point.  While having the 2 awesome fearsome mirror images at the top order fire simultaneously would ease a lot of pressure on him, it hasn’t happened in the series yet. More worrying was the lack of Gambhir, who pretty much was on the Aussies like an evil diaper rash at the No.3 Position.  Dhoni did try to shuffle it a bit and send Kohli up front, but that move backfired in a pretty big way. Gambhir probably being back for this game would help.

A good thought would be to send Harbhajan singh opening the batting. Bhajji of late seems to have perfected the art of bitchslapping the Aussies with the bat, while being underwhelming with the ball. His bowling has been a big concern for quite a while now. Frankly, after 10+ years of international cricket and being tagged the “premier” wicket tacker in your team, it should NOT be taking 4+ games in a 7 game series to get into your groove.

Big Cajones of STEEL Predictions by MTJAG:

1. Score set by the team batting first would be 270-280.

2. Gambhir and Hussey will fail to contribute a  30+ score this time. Law of averages catches up with them.

3. Sehwag starts out like the devil again, but fizzes away, after a 25.

4. Sachin gets 70+ in this game

5. Shaun Marsh will play well for the ‘Roos, and get a 50+

6. Raina and Jadeja play very useful roles both with the bat and ball this time.

7.  Hauritz grabs 3 wickets

8.  India gets the lead here . 3-2.

9. MoM :  Sachin.

On a beautiful warm fall afternoon I met up with a group of restaurant friends for a leisurely paddle and cranberry harvest. We canoed down a winding marsh to the cranberry bogs. Once there we took our empty yogurt containers and began the picking. The experience reminded me of the book, Blueberries for Sal. One or two cranberries at a time ker-plinking and ker-plunking in my “bucket.” The event was not complete without me falling into a deep mud hole and flooding my wellies within the first few minutes so that I sloshed my way through the rest of the afternoon.

Oaks Turn to Shine

We really have two fall foliage shows here in Southern Maine. First the maples turn in all their firey glory…and then, weeks later, when the last of the maple leaves are just clinging on, the oaks turn their rich copper brown and the forest and roadsides are filled with color again.

This is one of my two favorite vistas at Rachel Carson NWR, overlooking a bend in the Little River. This is higher than I generally frame it, but the oak leaves are as much the subject of the shot as the river and reflections. To me it all works together.

Sony DSC H50 at about 55mm equivalent for framing. F4.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.

In Lightroom, slight recovery for the reflections in the water. Fill Light for the foliage in the foreground. Blackpoint just slightly right. Added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen Landscapes preset.

From Rachel Carson NWR Seasons.

What did this scandal do for the consumer?

“>Business insurance article

Every insurance agent out there laughs at this whole Marsh scandal because every agency out there has been paid kick-backs from their insurance carriers, it has been going on for years people. This scandal is nothing new – however, I have spoken directly with some individuals at Marsh who have told me that it was so much more than the kick-backs and that is why it came into light, but the only thing we really ever see on this is about what is standard business in this industry, getting paid extra commission or incentives for writing business with a particular insurance carrier.

The way the system works -

Independent agents obtain appointments with insurance carriers, the agents must sign agreements with these carriers, those agreements include such items as -

How much business the agency must write with the carrier, it can include incentives to the agency for writing a certain volume of business. It can also include pulling the appointment if the business is unprofitable, or not enough volume in premium is written. This is one reason insurance agencies do not represent more carriers they have to make sure they can write business with them or they would lose the appointment anyways.

The carrier will put how much support they will provide the agency, such as rating software, loans for business acquisition or expansion of sales, training, special discount they can allocate to clients or increased commission to the agency.

Many agents still withhold carriers they represent because they want to lead a client to buy from another carrier. This in the essence of the “independent agent” selling distribution to the consumer is in direct conflict, but I see it ALL the time. Not every agent or agency does this, but it is amazing how often this does happen. I find it blatantly WRONG. If the concept of an independent agent is to give a client several options on choice of carriers and coverage then I believe the client should see ALL the quotes available and the agent should do the due diligence of searching their markets.

Even if an agent does this it does NOT mean the client will even see the best quotes from those carriers. The reason, is because as with the contract that agencies and insurance carriers agree upon some agents have better relationships with their top five company’s that their bottom ten company’s and the bottom ten company’s won’t give their best rates to those agents, because they know where they stand with them….the bottom ten.

What the Marsh fiasco did do, and the only thing I see that this did, was it made insurance carriers state that they pay over riding commission or incentives to their agents. Take a look at any major insurance carriers web site and you will now see disclosure statements that say…”producers compensation disclosures” and it is detailed on what they receive. Here is an example from Travelers look at the bottom of the site and open up the disclosure link. Big deal, many other businesses are like this and I am okay with this being done. I have no beef with Travelers they are a good carrier and they can layout there compensation package anyway they want. Here is my beef, consumers need to stop thinking that their interests are aligned with their agent. I am not, absolutely NOT against agents either but most controllers, CFO’s, Presidents of a business need to be a little more savvy at looking at insurance costs and agents represent the insurance carriers first and foremost – FACT. The business or consumer is SECOND. I don’t know about you but when I am a customer, I want to be first on the important list. Who pays the agent? You do as a consumer of the insurance product and you pay a percentage of what the premium is – so….if the premium is $100,000 a year you pay at least $10,000 to the agent through the premium. If you could pay $60,000 for the same coverage and carrier then you would only pay $6,000 to the agent through the premium. So, let’s ask the question – does your agent want you to buy the $100,000 policy or the $60,000 policy? Simple isn’t it? The agent wants you to buy the highest price policy they can sell, they don’t want competition because then they will have to sell the lower cost policy. Not lessor coverage, just lessor cost. Lessor cost, lessor commission.

Agents hate what we do, so do insurance carriers – do you know why? Because we operate the most cost effective avenue for the consumer. Consumers win and insurance carriers get less money. Agents don’t lose working with us neither do carriers – they still insure businesses, they still receive premiums, they still receive commissions, they still receive kick-backs, they just get what is thoroughly market cost, not over inflated cost – and the consumer gets the best deal on the market. I like that!!! So should you. Which side of this fence do you want to be on?

Morning Marsh, Mackerel Sky, Drawing Water Sun

A very difficult image to expose and process. But who could resist the morning light, the pond, the sky, the reflections? One of the best parts of birding, as far as I am concerned is that it gets me out to places like this at times like this.

I am still not totally happy with the exposure on this image. I needed to catch the drawing water rays, so the foreground was way too dark. You can only do so much manipulation in software. This is a case where multiple exposures processed for HDR might have produced better results.

Still…it is what it is, and I think it catches the mood.

Sony DSC H50 at about 60mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto. Exposure read favoring the sky by tipping the camera up and locking exposure.

Heavy Recovery and Fill Light in Lightroom. Blackpoint slightly right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen Landscape preset.

From Cape May 10/09.

Okay…had some time this am so I opened LightZone (for the first time in months) just to see what I could do with this difficult image with the tools there. This is maybe a bit over the top…processed for maximum drama. But it certainly is an alternative view.

As above: but with drama! LightZone treatment.