Winter Teasel

I think these are also called Dipsacus Laciniatus but Winter Teasel sounds better for this blog post.

I drove by an area that looked interesting so I came back with my son for scouting. It's only when I was ready to leave that I saw these. So I kept this spot in mind for sunset.

One evening, after some snowfall, I went to the golf course in the hope to get some pictures. Unfortunately, it didn't work out. Luckily, I remembered the location of the teasel and it's very close to the golf course.

This was shot with my Fujifilm X-T3 + Rokinon 50mm 1.2. This is out of camera raw with Lightroom presets (Adobe Color):

I bumped the contrast a bit, lowered the highlights, lifted the shadows, and added a bit of clarity and texture. The vibrance was increased a bit but the blue saturation was decreased. That's it for global, not even color grading as I liked how pure it already looked. I have a radial filter on the top right side to soften the light from that area with some negative dehaze. It's easy to go overboard with this effect (I've done so in the past). There are 2 brush adjustments on the plant. 1 for the whole plan to lift the shadows and another to enhance the light. I did that by brushing only on the highlights and increasing the highlights. I also added a bit of warmth by changing the temperature.

50mm 1/640sec F/5.6 ISO 160

I'm really glad I scouted this location. At first, I didn't mind the dark area in the top right corner but now I wished I would've composed differently. Still a nice pleasant simple image.