How to catch difficult subjects (practice for SoFoBoMo)

Spring sunshine in a fir forest, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Young birches in spring sunshine, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Certain things are difficult to catch in a photograph, at least for me. One such thing is a high-contrast forest landscape. Even though the scene looks good to the eye, the resulting photograph often disappoints. Here are two images, in which the original photograph was nothing like the original scene. But I managed to bring some of the original back in post-processing with LightZone.

In the first image, I increased the contrast (both local and overall) but quite a lot, and the result is close to the way I saw the scene. The bright green of the branches is in contrast with the dark bark of the tree trunks.

In the second image I was much less successful. Here I must admit that shooting jpeg is one cause for the failure. Although I tried to preserve the highlights without losing the details in the shadows I didn't manage too well. RAW would have helped. But I'm almost incurable jpeg shooter, so I have to cope with the limitations.

One thing which I didn't anticipate regarding my "35 Trees" SoFoBoMo project was the great amount of light we have in May here in Finland. I must discover some ways of coping with high-contrast scenes. The best time for shooting trees would probably be during lightly clouded or even slightly rainy weather. But I'll try even in in conditions such we had today.