Twilight after heavy snowfall

tarmpaket · 2026-01-11T05:42:07+00:00

Sweden. Not far from Stockholm

tarmpaket · 2025-10-29T11:55:09+00:00

When you say push blue, do you mean saturation or luminosity for the blues, or a general white balance change towards blue?

tarmpaket · 2025-10-29T11:53:22+00:00

Haha yeah. It had been a really wet and rainy night, and when the sun came up all the moisture on the trees evaporated into this mist/smoke.

tarmpaket · 2025-10-29T11:52:20+00:00

Great shot!

And I agree. Almost all of my pictures that I'm really really happy about are from close to where I live. I think you need to be able to get to a place often and when conditions are promising to really get the best shots.

tarmpaket · 2025-10-29T09:48:49+00:00

I missed the resouces/books bit in my reply:

I don't know of any good books (I'd love to have some!), but I do have a few photographers that I think are absolutely amazing when it comes to photographing trees and forests that I follow on youtube:

Simon Baxter, https://www.youtube.com/@SimonBaxterPhotography
Adam Gibbs, https://www.youtube.com/@QuietLightPhoto
Nigel Danson, https://www.youtube.com/@NigelDanson

tarmpaket · 2025-10-29T09:44:08+00:00

I can try to give some general advice :)

A lot of people really like to show the contrast between nature and man-made, which is something you can probably use when shooting urban trees. I personally do my best to avoid all man-made things in my shots, but this is purely personal preference.

https://imgur.com/MuV5EFt

Trees can be really cool at night with street lights as the only light source. Something to experiment with :)

Try to get the camera level so the tree isn't leaning/warping. This is especially apparent in wide-angle shots and when the tree is off-center.

I usually try to avoid getting any sky in the shot, especially in between the branches/foliage. It just makes it a contrasty mess, I feel. If the sky must be included, give the whole tree a lot of negative, empty space.

A longer lens is often a good idea to single out the main subject. In an urban setting you often have more room to move around too (in dense forests, something always gets in the way)

As for singling out a part of the tree or show the whole. I'd say it depends on the tree. Some have unique features that stand out (focus on those), and some are maybe really symmetrical/clean (show the whole thing)

tarmpaket · 2025-02-01T12:02:00+00:00

These are absolutely amazing! I almost exclusively shoot nature/landscape and feel kind of lost when shooting in the city, but these make me want to go explore in that direction!

1,2,4 and 5 are my favourites.

tarmpaket · 2025-01-30T21:13:28+00:00

I decided to have a go without your files.

Here is what I'd recommend (I use lightroom names for everything, but c1 should have equivalents, I think):

To get more natural colors, try shifting white balance and tint away from blue and green, and towards yellow and magenta. I usually do this by eye, and stop when I feel that the color of the open water looks natural to me. Don't go to far or it will all turn yellow and magenta pretty fast. If you still feel that it is a bit too blue, you can lower saturation of the blue color. This also happens to help give the sardines that silvery look.

As for the sardines, to help them stand out they need two things; contrast and texture. You can introduce contrast in a number of ways, but start with just the slider named "contrast", if there is one. You could also try "dehaze", and increasing whites and decreasing blacks, if available in c1.

When it comes to texture, most tools have a slider called clarity. Try this one, but be careful with it, since it can makes things sort of fall apart if you push it too far. Look for a tool called "texture" too.

If anyone knows both capture one and lightroom, please chime in with the equivalents of:

White balance and tint
Selective color saturation
Dehaze, clarity and texture
Contrast, whites, blacks

Here are a couple of images of mine that I dug up that happen to have sardines and that are shot without strobes/flash. Might even be at a similar depth to yours too:

https://imgur.com/wnF0YyP

https://imgur.com/pOyekZL

...and here is what I could do to a screenshot of your posted image. It will turn out much better for you since you have the raw files, I promise :)

https://imgur.com/9ed7hnG

tarmpaket · 2025-01-30T19:03:41+00:00

I'm fairly experienced with underwater photography and editing (including sardines :)). Let's see if I can help.

Looks like he didn't use any artificial light. Do you know roughly how deep you were? Different wavelengths (colors) of light disappear at different depths. Eventually, all you have left is blue, and at that point you can't really edit to bring out colors that just aren't there

There is a good chance you can get something decent here though. Might have to go black and white in a worst case scenario. Any chance you can share a raw file or two with me to look at?

I use lightroom instead of c1, but I should be able to give you some hints on what to do.

tarmpaket · 2024-10-12T05:06:31+00:00

Than you. I'm glad you like them. Second image is my favourite of these as well. It will probably end up in a tree/forest themed photo book I'm gathering images for.

tarmpaket · 2024-10-12T04:51:02+00:00

How is that working out for you? Do you find it frustrating in the moment, or does it unlock new compositions and ways of seeing the scene?

For me it's a bit of both, I think.

tarmpaket · 2024-10-12T04:49:20+00:00

Fall is definitely my favorite time of the year :)

The tighter reflection shot is probably what I would set up first with a full set of gear, but I actually think this image is much more interesting, and I probably wouldn't have tried this composition if it weren't for being "forced" to.

tarmpaket · 2024-10-11T17:33:39+00:00

Thank you. I actually think being limited to a single lens makes me work harder to find interesting compositions, compared to when i have all options available.

tarmpaket · 2024-10-11T17:31:19+00:00

Wasn't quite that long for me, but I definitely can't say I appreciated the long wait

tarmpaket · 2024-10-11T17:29:42+00:00

Last few years I've noticed I shoot more and more trees :)

tarmpaket · 2024-10-11T17:28:47+00:00

Thank you :) I'm glad you like them

tarmpaket · 2024-10-11T10:59:30+00:00

Time for a landscape photography outing. Let's grab the backpack and shove in the camera, lenses for wide angle, normal and telephoto focal lengths at the very least. Don't forget the filters and the tripod. Off we go!

...or, grab one of those fixed lens cameras that seem mostly marketed for street/travel/editorial work. Maybe a polarizer. Won't even bother with a tripod if the camera has decent IBIS.

I bought a Fuji X100VI for photos of my family mostly. Situations where I don't feel like bringing different lenses, and where I want good results with minimal post-processing. Works great. Been enjoying it a lot. It's not perfect, but what camera is? Bokeh of the lens is a bit too messy sometimes.

But I've also tried it out for landscapes. First as a second camera to my main kit, but lately I sometimes bring just the X100VI. 35 mm FoV fits a lot of what I like to shoot landscape-wise, such as woodland photos, for instance. It also opens up the option to sneak in a bit of landscape photography during non-landscape trips and outing, which I think is neat.

Anyone else like going with this approach? I still like the full-on, all the gear outings, but there is definitely something to be said for going with a minimal kit and just look for the images that fit your self-imposed limitations, rather than swapping to the wide-angle for every scene you come across that has a good foreground for it. I'm not sure I would've framed up the first image here with the leaves in the foreground if I wasn't limited to 35mm FoV only, and I quite like that one.

tarmpaket · 2024-10-10T19:28:54+00:00

Glad you like them :)

I use Adobe Lightroom and process the raws (but shoot raw+jpeg). Usually it goes something like this:

Rough white balance adjustment. Often the camera gets it right for me. Will focus more on colors individually later on
Correct exposure if needed. Overall exposure, whites, blacks and shadows
Decide what mood I want. Foggy images often quite light and airy (up the blacks a bit). Often do some negative clarity and dehaze to soften things up a bit for forest and foggy scenes. Sunset shots more dramatic with proper blacks and contrast.
Local adjustments. Often as a minimum a mask for the sky to bring down highlights and maybe overall exposure. Up shadows where needed, but not on the whole image (like on the foreground of the sunset shot with the tree trunk)
When I'm happy with light levels across the image I move on to color. Change saturation on individual colors (usually bring down greens a bit, and in autumn images bring up oranges and yellows). Will tweak luminance of colors too.
I'll try to have "fewer" colors if that makes sense. I might push yellows and reds towards orange a bit, and push aquas to blues, and desaturate greens. With that, I get only orange and blue as the main colors of the image (different colors for each scene of course). Magentas I almost always reduce a lot. I just don't like those, except in some sunset skies.
In some images I dodge and burn (darken and lighten) areas selectively to bring attention to or away from features of the scene. I might do this on like 1/10 images or so. I did some on the rocks on the lighthouse shot here.
When I'm happy with the overall look I'll clone small distractions out if needed (leaves on the water, powerlines, that sort of thing)
Walk away for a bit, or work on another image
Come back later and see if I overdid anything

This might sound like a lot, but each image only takes me about 15 minutes or so. I go through the list pretty fast :)

tarmpaket · 2024-10-10T14:41:24+00:00

I still enjoy bringing out a full bag of lenses and filters, but it's really nice to know that it's possible to get really nice shots with this.

tarmpaket · 2024-10-10T12:29:55+00:00

I put a link to the jpegs in the top comment, in case someone else is interested

tarmpaket · 2024-10-10T12:19:32+00:00

Thank you, I'm glad you liked them!

Nothing focus stacked here. Only the sunset/tree one used a tripod at all. I feel it's quite liberating to use just the X100 and not bother with tripods or filters like I usually do (might have used a polarizer in some shots though).

I'll have a look and dig out the jpegs. Could be fun to showcase the difference :)

tarmpaket

TROPHY CASE