David Nightingale of www.chromasia.com is a world renowned photographer and Photoshop trainer who has mastered just about every form of photography there is, from portraits to abstracts to HDR.  He's so good, he can make a picture of powerlines look good.  He's one of the best I've seen!  I even had the honor of attending one of his courses here in Austin a few years back.  He is also a master of using Photoshop, mainly Photoshop's curves adjustment to help transform images into great works of art.  He has an excellent photoblog as well as a great training site.  If you are really interested in getting the most out of your photos, check it out.  It's very much worth it.

All of that being said, he put an image on his training blog that he took recently and challenged others to process it.  He was OK with the results he got from it himself, but he wanted to see what others could do.  So the following is my take.  The first shot is his original straight from his camera and the second is what I've done with it.  You can visit his post to see what other have done as well.

I have to add that David said he liked this version of which I posted on FB so I guess I know what I'm doing a little... ;-)  What do you think?