What you use primarily, was it cropped, could you lift the shadows a little
Robin
Obviously each shot is different but in this case I had to do a bit of work to make this one appear as natural as possible for a couple of reasons.
1. Being attacked by flies.
2. Couldn't get bracketing to work on an automated basis because I forget the correct setting on the D800E.
Using ACR.
Global settings, increased exposure, decreased highlights substantially (-80), increased shadows substantially (+80), increased whites, decreased blacks, decreased clarity, added vibrance and saturation, set WB to 7300k, reduced blue saturation by -9.
Localised on entire foreground, added exposure (+1 stop), increased contrast (+52), decreased shadows, saturation, clarity.
Localised on distance tree, reduced exposure by 0.4 stops.
That's it. If I had more time on location I probably would have had to make far less extreme tweaks in post.