Tree and Light

This photo was taken at approximately 3pm on the 21st September 2023 and developed from a single raw file with On1 Photo RAW.

The tree is located at the southern end of Tarn Hows on the opposite side of the path from the tarn itself.

Because of the perceived dynamic range in the scene, I shot a bracketed RAW file set. But movement of leaves and grasses caused alignment problems.

Having rejected the HDR blend, I later returned to see what could be done with a single file. I found that the middle -0.3 EV exposure had sufficient dynamic range to develop the photo without clipping.

Happy days!

My Usual Style

I developed the image in my usual way, pursuing strong contrast, colour and slightly clipped blacks. But somehow, I wasn’t totally satisfied with the results.

I took a break from it.

Painterly Look

Some weeks later, I remembered having watched one of Nigel Danson’s Youtube videos where he explained how he edits his woodland photos to have a painterly look. At the time of watching, I hadn’t paid so much attention to the idea, because I usually develop photos for contrast, colour and detail.

But the more I thought about it, the more curious I became.

My Own Take on It

The painterly look isn’t promoted by many, and Nigel seems to be one of the main exponents for landscape photos. But like most things in life, I like to do things my own way, so I can justify everything to myself and have a thorough understanding of what I’ve done.

I duplicated the RAW file, and started from scratch with a new edit. Also, I had just installed the 2024 version of Photo RAW and wanted get to know it.

The Process

The main idea when developing for a painterly look is to have no true blacks and less global micro contrast, so the overall look is softer.

The ideas for processing colours are a little more varied, other than reducing saturation. My approach was to feature two complementary colours and reduce the saturation of the others. So in this image, blue and yellow are featured, and the balance subdued.

I think it’s an approach that works well for woodland images and am quite pleased with this first attempt at the style.

Comments welcome, as usual.