Went on a walk to a nearby forest on Christmas morning and waited for the sun to start rising. It was partially occluded by clouds but still shined quite nicely through the birches.
This one is edited with darktable 3.8. I wanted to convey some of the magic of sunrise (hence the bloom effect) and created a painterly, impactful look while avoiding going over the top with the highlight chroma. It was already quite light so I also wanted to bring up the snow in the foreground. It’s surprisingly hard to balance… However I’m quite satisfied. This one could potentially be a nice playground for some of the novel highlight reconstruction algorithms in development for darktable.
Thank you for a beautiful photograph which I have no doubt spoilt!
I tried two different approaches, neither of which achieved what I had in mind.
Done in GIMP. The first I tried to emphasise the colours while keeping the snow from becoming too blue.
The second, a black and white version, but re-introducing the merest hint of colour.
Indeed, I really enjoy it too! There are so many different ways to view this scene.
The lighter ones are the closest to my memory of the scene.Tthe darker ones by @Jade_NL and @heckflosse certainly convey a very different but powerful story.
That’s a very good rendition of the highlights indeed! @CarVac’s result is also pretty impressive.
Here’s another try of mine. Tried to emphasize the blue patches of the sky a bit more while also rolling off the chroma of the red areas for a more natural look. Added a final “diffuse or sharpen” instance to recover a bit of the local contrast that was lost when I aimed for a quite light look.