Taking Advantage of a Sunny February Day
Vancouver is known as Rain City, and it has more than been living up to its name this winter. If we don't have a cold snap, it will be the first winter in 43 years that Vancouver won't have any snow at all. I want just a little bit so I can feel like winter happened! Ah well, time will tell.
Saturday was super rainy, and it was forecasted that Sunday would be too. But much to my surprise, it ended up being brilliantly sunny and mild. My parents were coming over for the afternoon so I told them we needed to get out and enjoy the sun! We headed over to the Endowment Lands and enjoyed a solid walk amongst the trees. It was their first time experiencing it, so it was nice to be able to show them something new.
Enjoying the Walk
My focus was to just get outside and enjoy being in nature, so I didn't bring my camera and snap a thousand photos 😆. For the most part, I left my phone in my pocket as well, but there were some moments that were too good to pass up. The air was crisp and sweet, and the sun broke through the trees in patches. There was just a touch of fog hanging in the trees, making for a wonderful atmosphere and some cool god rays too 😎.
Creating a Forest-Worthy Preset
Part of me wishes I snapped a bunch of photos because as I was sitting on the couch editing photos, I was hungry for more editing. I've always found forest shots to be tricky to work with because of all the different light and shadows in a given shot—it's easy for them to either be too over or under-exposed.
I love creating my own Lightroom presets, and over the years I have made a few that I look back on and think "damn, I did good with that one". Editing these photos, I put my years of experimenting and practice to use to create a preset that would help make forests look lush and green that would balance out the highlights and shadows for a consistent presentation across a given shot.
The Results
These photos are the product of the new preset and I am so happy with how it turned out! I named it Fern after the lush vegetation found in these PNW forests. The photo above showcases how the highlights aren't blown out, everything is wonderfully green and the shadows are mostly balanced (I purposely darkened them for this shot to add contrast to the god ray highlighting the spider web).
There is a bit of a filmic quality to this look with the highlights being brought down a fair bit. In the photo below, you can see the sky is still somewhat light, but nowhere near as bright as it would be normally. Without editing, the sky is nearly blown own white and adds a contrast that disrupts the visual consistency of the image as a whole.
A Tutorial Maybe?
I'm pretty happy with how this preset turned out! I think I might make a video walking through the steps of how I created it. Once I record that, I'll update this post with the vid.
