How I shot my one of my favourite pictures

There's a lot that comes to shooting an amazing photo. This is one example and I hope it helps you get more incredible pictures.

Planning

Fully planned is half done as the saying goes and it very well applies to photography as well. This photo didn't require too much planning but it was still a crucial part of it.

When it comes to planning, the two most important parts of outdoor photography are location and lightning. For this image I wanted to capture the darkness and cold of the Polar night but also the beaty of it.

This icy branch with the sunset behind it worked perfectly for my intentions.

I didn't have a clear plan on exactly I was going to shoot but I just went to the location with an idea in my mind and tried to find something that fit the theme. Sometimes that's all the planning you need to capture a beatiful photograph.

Taking the shot

When taking the shot, there's couple things to pay attention to: camera settings and framing. This particular shot was a still image so I set up a tripod and adjusted the camera settings accordingly.

If you want to read a beginner photography guide a made last week, you can read it here!

This branch was very easy to frame because there was a beatiful branch in the middle and a little branches on the side to frame the shot perfectly. Everything in the photo works together in perfect harmony.

The framing, as well as the light, guides The viewers eyes to the middle where the main subject branch is located. The light also emphasizes the details of the branch making the photo even better.

Post-processing

Arguably one of the most important parts of the whole process is post-processing, believe it or not. First we start with Lightroom and basic adjustments.

My main goal when editing this photo was to highlight the two main colors: yellow and purple. These colors together form a complimentary color palette because they are on the opposite sides of the color wheel

I do this by increasing the purple in the shadows and yellow in the highlights. I use both the tone curve, and the color grading tab for this. If I need to do any adjustments to certain colors I use the color mixer tab to do those.

And then the most important part of editing in my opinion, the masking.

I always start with a linear gradient at the bottom and decrease the exposure of it. This helps guide the viewers eyes to the towards the middle. Then I make a subject mask and increase the shadows and exposure if needed.

I wanted to really emphasize the yellow and orange tones in the sunset so I made a sky mask and extracted the other part of the sky from the mask with a linear gradient mask. Then I increased the temperature of the mask and played around with the tone curve a bit to achieve the look I desired.

Then came the hardest part of the process when I had to mask the foreground and remove the branches from the mask. This is because I wanted to brighten up the sunset and the light that was reflecting on the ground. I also needed to increase the temperature so that the lighting was more realistic. I did this by using linear gradient masks, and subtracting from the mask with brush masks.

The sky still felt a little empty without clouds or anything so I decided to add some stars in Photoshop since the photo was dark. There's plenty of star brushes online but I added my stars with a simple brush. I just selected a few pixels wide brush and played around with the hardness and opacity sliders to create the look that fit the photo.

The last step I did, was to upscale the photo in Topaz Photo AI. This step is optional and pretty costly as well. You don't need to do this if you don't need high resolution photos. I did this because I intend to sell this photo as a print. If you do do this, I would recommend you to do it last, because if you don't have a monster workstation it might become very laggy due to the scale of the photo.

There you have it!

That's it! Now you're ready to capture and edit more incredible pictures yourself. Remember, that this photo is just one example and there are multiple ways and techniques to make amazing pictures!

Happy shooting, and see you next week!