Dandelions Field + Trees And Hills

This spring I was motivated to find a nice field with yellow dandelions since they don't last very long. Unfortunately, I couldn't find what I was looking for. I went for multiple drives and looked for nice fields but most of them were clear of dandelions. This is the best I got.

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

I opted for the telephoto lens because I wanted to compress the dandelions. It makes it look like there's more compared to when I tried with the 27mm. This meant I had to focus stack (7 images). Not much for global adjustments. Contrast +10 and Vibrance -6. In the Tone Curve, Blacks are lifted by a lot +16. In the HSL, Orange saturation is cranked up +47. Red and green +7. In the Hue, green is +8 to make them less yellow. Color grading is typical orange highlights with blue shadows. Finally, in Calibration, Blue primary saturation is +10.

Alright, so for local I have 2 gradient filters. 1 for the sky and 1 for the foreground. The foreground one has the highlights reduced to -66. The sky one has the temp lowered -33, exposure -0.23, highlights -29, clarity +31, and saturation -8. I have a radial filter for the vignetting.

I brought it in Photoshop to focus stack it. I then increased contrast again by 10, lowered the temperature by 6, increased tint by 6, and increased shadows by 7. Those subtle changes make a nice difference.

55mm 1/60sec F/11 ISO 160

While scouting for fields I came across this scene. I like the layers with the grass, trees, and hills in the background. I don't think my composition here is great and also the light was rather flat. But I've noted this one and will come back later this year.

This one is almost too long to write. For the colors, I played a lot with the Calibration and HSL. I used the brush tool and masked the highlights to make them pop even more since the light was a bit flat.

I would prefer more sky in this shot. It looks too tight and if I could get some sidelight, I think it would be pretty good.

105mm 1/80sec F/11 ISO 400

I enjoyed scouting even though I would call it unsuccessful. These images are not something I'm terribly proud of but now I have a benchmark for next time. It's about the journey, not the end result.