Woodland Photography

While in a general sense I would describe my photographic interests as Nature Photography, I have for the most part avoided woodland or forest photography. Woodlands are by nature fairly chaotic environments and its difficult to create a compelling composition out of a mass of trees, branches, deadfall, leaves, etc.

A short time ago, I participated in a photography workshop on Vancouver Island. I registered in the workshop for two reasons. Firstly, it was run by two photographers who I have followed and admired for a number of years. Secondly, the major part of the workshop would be on woodland photography with the balance of the time spent on seascapes. It was time to challenge myself to improve my woodland image making skills. In this post I will include some of my favorite images from the week. At the same time I will point our that my woodland photography abilities are very much a work in progress!

There are a number of challenges to photographing a woodland scene. Already mentioned is that the scene is often chaotic. The challenge is to simplify the chaos: not always an easy process. Another challenge is lighting. A bright sunny sky can create huge contrast in the scene from very bright areas (specular highlights) to very dark shadows. The bright areas can create a lot of distractions, drawing the eye away from what the photographer wants you to be looking at. Overcast skies or rainy days are actually ideal for woodland images. However, one result of flat lighting is that the scene appears flat. Appropriate post processing can help bring some sense of depth to a scene, as in the example below. The before photo is straight out of the camera and appears somewhat two dimensional. After some subtle processing, the after image has a little more depth to it. (Move the slider to reveal either the before or after image).

Part of our week was spent in an old growth forest. Being amongst these beautiful old trees is truly a special experience. The following images are some of my favorites from this forest.

We also spent time in a second some second growth forests. They had a very different feel to them. With smaller, much more crowded, trees they were much more chaotic and challenging to photograph. I did end up with a few images that I liked.

In my next post, I will share some of the seascape images that I captured during this week.

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