winter: pine trees, a bit of snow + a bit of sun light

nonophuran · January 5, 2026, 8:57am

Hi everyone,

It was cold, it was sunny and we were on a small road in a forest of pines.

The sky was clear blue, the sun was soon setting and could be sometimes seen through the trees.

In these conditions (handheld, no bracketing), not wanting to sacrifice highlights, I underexpose and then find it rather difficult to post-process the shots, in order to compress the dynamic range whilst retaining a natural look.
And when I say difficult, my focus is on the workflow itself: how do I avoid having to paint stuff locally and what’s the greatest amount of global adjustments I can do (to keep it simple).

Let me know what you’d typically do.