most of the process was achieved during the shooting of the image.
our tour group arrive on site around mid afternoon, about two hours before sunset. hokkaido is in winter so shorter days are the norm. it also happen that the weather was rather moody and rain/snow was imminent hence the dark clouds. the direction of the shot was east as the sun was behind me so you get nice sunfilled landscape in the scene.
in post, i gave additional treatment to boost the details from the shadow areas to bring up the details. applied extreme curves to emphasize mid and shadow areas and finally to give the image a little more pop, i boosted the cyan and blue color channels.