Silver-lined autumn trees

I took this picture with a low-lying sun coming right over the mountain, from behind the trees, and illuminating them. It was terribly back light, but I loved the silver lining that it was giving to the trees. To limit flare I used my hand as a cover (I don't carry much equipment, hence I didn't have a flare cover).

 

Post-processing was crucial (and I used darktable, as always). First, my hand was casting a pink blur on the top of the image. Second, the image was lacking contrast and had some dots from dust that had caught the sun flare. I played with tone curves to remove my hand and to focus the importance of the composition on the trees, decreasing the contrast in the bottom of the image. I used spot removal to remove the dots of dust. I used the equalizer filter in clarity mode to add contrast to the trees, and in particular to their trunk. I used a bit of split-toning, with highlights in yellow and shadows in orange, to tune the overall color of the image; but I was careful not to kill the subtle shades of colors that were present in the various trees.

 

Done