While hiking towards a seabird rookery on Heimaey, the largest island in the Vestmannaeyjar Archipelago, I caught a glimpse of three islands through the “eye of a needle.” The rock formation had been eroded into an arch, and the distant islands stretched to the right of the window. We were exhausted by the steep climb and uneven terrain, so Tamy was more than willing to yield for a photo break. I paced back and fourth to find an angle where the islands would be framed by the arch. Sadly, the light was impossibly hazy and the distance between the foreground rocks and background islands was so great that the photo you see here could not be made from a single shot. To capture what I saw and imagined, the final picture would require some work in post. Aware of this key point from the start, I took a moment to pre-plan the shoot. I set the white balance in the camera to “cloudy” and focused carefully on the foreground rock formation. By setting the lens to 200mm and f11, I knew I would capture good detail in both the plants and arch. After making the first image, I checked the camera’s histogram to ensure that none of the highlights or shadows were clipped. The production of a balanced, yet boring photo, maximized the data for post-processing. Before packing up the camera, I took a second photograph at the same focal length, aperture, shutter speed and white balance, but varied my point of focus. Rather than capturing the details of the arch this time, I focused on the islands in the distance. These two original photographs are pictured below as unprocessed raw images.