Creative License

When I first started on my journey into digital photography I had a purist mentality where I thought the image should be created in the camera with little to no post processing using the computer.  Through research I came to realize that even the legendary photographer Ansel Adams didn't capture the final image in the camera, he too used some sort of post processing in the darkroom to create his final images, so why can't I?

So, with the purist mindset pushed aside I set out to create the image that was in my minds eye but didn't actually exist at the moment I captured the original image.  I used Adobe Lightroom to convert the image to black and white and used a bit of dodging and burring (old darkroom terms for darken and lightening and image) to get just the right look.

Below is the original image straight out of the camera with no post processing.