About the Image(s)

Camera Canon 80D f18 1/160 ISO 400 Lens Tokina 11mm
Beam of Light

I took this image when I was in the Badlands in 2023. I've toyed with this numerous times. I am still not sure if I am satisfied with the results. So any advice or suggestions would be welcomed.

I cropped way in and then I denoised. From here in ACR I adjusted the temperature and brought it into PS. In PS I added a curves layer to the blue channel and brought out the highlights. Cropped sky in verted and then worked a curves layer to lighten the more of the highlights. I separated the brights and added another curve layer. I added to the dreamy layer. I added another curves layer