This is my final post before Christmas and New Year, when I will be taking a break.
I had hoped to share some breathtaking frozen landscape photos, but unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to venture out with my camera. More importantly, we haven’t had any real frost. December has been a complete washout here, with the weather being dull and overcast, punctuated by frequent and heavy rainfall.
I did venture out to photograph the local Santa Dash, where around 2,000 people dressed Santa race 5 km around Saddleworth. Kevin Sinfield, who was at the end of the final leg of his latest ultra marathon challenge, stopped by to address the Santas. I’ve never seen someone look so ill on dry land before; what an effort to complete the challenge.
Unfortunately, I can’t share any photos of the event as the rain was too heavy to take my camera out of its bag (I was testing a new lens, so I couldn’t risk it). Instead, I want to share a photograph of frost on the landscape in December of last year.
I shot this handheld with a Fuji XT5 camera and a Fuji 16-80 lens at 41mm. The shutter speed was 1/2400 second at f/5.6 and ISO1000.
The RAW file was processed first using DxO PureRAW. The DNG file produced by this was then edited in Lightroom to enhance the light in the top left of the frame. I then applied the Nik Color Efex Plugin in Photoshop to enhance the glow further before doing some dodging and burning with colour. If you want to see the starting RAW file before editing, it’s shown below.
I also recorded the photo editing to publish on my YouTube channel once I’ve had time to add an explanation of my steps. It will be live in January at some point.
If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful time, and I wish everyone the best for 2025.
The Lightweight Photographer 
That’s a nice photo 😊 happy Christmas