Aucoin Tree

I see this tree on almost a daily basis and the shape is so different that I'm always thinking I can make something out of it. The problem with this tree is the background. It's very close to the other trees so you easily see the branches which makes everything hard to see.

We had a snowfall with some wet snow which helps to stick to the branches. I decided I'll go try anyway. Unfortunately, even with editing, it's still a mess.

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

I won't go into too much detail for this one. I basically tried everything to separate the tree from the background. There's a lot of dodge and burning and also color differences. Darken the background with a cooler temperature and brighten the tree with a warmer temperature.

I tried shooting at F/5.6 to have as much separation as possible but that leaves some part of the tree out of focus.

156mm 1/200sec F/5.6 ISO 160

I'm posting this because sometimes we fail and that's ok. But, there's still a small chance I can get a shot with this tree. Backlit and focus stacking. By shooting with a bigger aperture, I'll get more separation but I'll need to focus stack because the depth of field is so small. This will be tricky but worth a try. Also, in early winter the sun sets at an angle that could backlit the tree but not the background trees which would create a nice separation.