If you go down to the woods….
A particular genre of photography I’ve found myself enjoying more and more over the past few years is woodland and forestry photography. There is just something wonderful and tranquil about exploring an ancient woodland and discovering all the wonderful wildlife and fungi that call the forest home. But for me I take pleasure from observing the way the trees and foliage interact with the environment.
The other beauty of spending time in a woodland is that it is constantly changing. You can visit during anyone of the four seasons and you’ll come away with something different every time. Spring time is when the forest starts coming to life though. You can often find Snowdrops, Bluebells and Wild Garlic at this time of year, and coupled with those crisp and misty mornings you can really introduce some atmosphere into your images. Where as during the autumn months the forest changes from the vibrant greens of summer to those wonderful red, orange and golden hues as the foliage prepares to enter it’s dormant phase.
Working in woodland allows for you to get creative with depth of field by using a wide aperture of f2.8 or even f1.4 if you have a lens that opens that wide.. You can get yourself low down to the ground and shoot through some blue bells or get right up close to a toadstool and throw the background completely out of focus.
Along with a good sturdy tripod such as Vanguard’s Veo3T+ 264CB one pice of equipment I can recommend to anyone who is getting into woodland photography is a Kase 1/4 Mist diffusion filter. These filters are generally used in videography to create that cinematic look but they can also be used with stills photography to gently take the edge off the ultra sharp images that are produced by modern digital cameras.
The last bit of advice I’ll give about photographing in woodlands is that you want to use a fast shutter speed of around 1/250th second as even though the leave may appear still on first glance there can often be a gentle breeze causing a bit of movement. So I’ve mentioned about using a wide aperture above, but as the forests can often be starved of light you will need to increase your ISO to compensate and allow you to get the desired shutter speed. If you are worried about introducing noise into your images you you have to remember that woodland scenes are often quite busy, and any noise you introduce will often be hidden amongst the scene. And sometimes a bit of noise can be used creatively to introduce that extra bit of character or atmosphere to your image.
If you’d like to have a go at woodland photography but you are unsure of where to begin then why not join me on a Woodland Photography Workshop with Longitude Photography Experiences?
