Winter Cattail

I went scouting on the golf course near my house and I noticed this lake in particular with intact cattails. I thought they looked really nice with the snow. A morning or evening shot would work but this is an evening shot and I think it's what makes all the difference.

I like backlit shots at a 45-degree angle and this is one of them. The difference with a morning shot is in the evening the sun sets behind some big trees. You can see the shadows being cast on the lake. This shot would be very plain if there wouldn't be any shadows being cast.

This shot was with my Fujifilm X-T3 + Fujinon XF55-200mm. This is out of camera raw with Lightroom presets (Adobe Color):

The colors when I was there were amazing. There's something about the winter sun and snow. So I played with the color grading by adding warmth to the mid-tones and coolness/purple to the highlights. I decrease the highlights of the overall picture by a lot. This helped to bring detail out of the sun rays on the snow. Small adjustments from clarity, texture, dehaze, and contrast. Very easy to go overboard with those.

I picked a square format because this bunch of cattails was less chaotic and excluding the others, made it simpler and less busy.

55mm 1/250sec F/5.6 ISO 160

So far, winter photography is amazing. The only annoying thing would be that sunset is around dinner time but the color of the sun is the best combined with white snow and you have awesome conditions.