Forest Photography

Forests can be difficult to photograph with harsh light streaming through the trees creating harsh shadows against brilliant highlights. Chaos reigns over simplicity where branches intersect, and textures vie for attention. They are busy places where the eye can find little rest. If the eye has difficulty finding rest, your camera lens as an extension of your eye will not find it. Finding a way to simplify your forest scenes becomes the task in forest photography.

Our brains like simplicity. When we look at an image, our brains like to be able to discern easily the subject and story the photographer finds important. Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you walk through a park woodland to help you find and compose an image filled with story without the clutter.

Who is your story about? In forest photography, it isn’t simply about finding a nice composition, it’s about finding the main character of your image. It could be a gnarly tree, or a fern resting in the roots of a cedar, or flowers along the path, or even how the sun lights the moss clinging to a branch. Find the character you want to feature in your image then look for compositional elements to highlight the character.

How’s the light? Look around you. Is the sun shining brightly casting dark shadows through the forest? Is it an overcast day where shadows and highlights are softer? Is it a dull day with barely any light seeping through the foliage? Each of these lighting situations bring with it their own challenges and rewards. Harsh shadows give your images a graphic quality that you can further accentuate by converting your image into black and white. Turn your back to the sun to find a composition that is completely lit from the front yet the background falls into shadow. These images are great to emphasize shapes and textures of branches and leaves. Even better, look for plants that are backlit and the background falls into shadow as they make beautiful and dramatic images. Bright overcast days make photographing forests easier as everything in the woodland density is more evenly lit. You still have shadows and highlights but not as dramatic. This lighting lends itself well to images of the personality of the forest; wider landscapes filled with trees and the ferns and bushes that fill the understory. The darkest days lend themselves well to small little vignettes of the shapes and textures of life. Find the little bright areas of leaves and flowers to focus on. Don’t stay home in the rain either. Throw on your macro lens or extension tubes to capture rain drops on leaves. Or capture the ethereal nature of rain in the forest as the air around you seems to moisten and soften. If you are lucky enough to have a foggy day in the forest, you will find other worldly images and subjects happily separated from the busy-ness of the background.

Will a different lens help? Different focal lengths of your lenses will give you flexibility in your compositions. As discussed earlier, landscape photographers rely on the holy trinity of zoom lenses – the ultra-wide angle, the mid-range, and the tele-photo. With these lenses you can capture all the moods of the forest. With the ultra-wide angle, you can capture environmental details and play with the curvature of the lens distortion. Try getting in close to a flower and have the forest in the background. With your mid-range lens you can capture all the scenes and details close to the trail. Your tele-photo zoom can isolate features and details farther away. Change out your lens to see if that helps you create the image you want.

What happens to the image if you open or close the aperture? The aperture, while regulating how much light reaches the sensor, will also determine how sharp the elements in front or behind your subject are. The aperture determines how thick your plane of focus us. The wider the aperture, the narrower your plane of focus and more elements behind and in front of the subject will be out of focus. The narrower the aperture, the thicker your plane of focus and more elements around your subject will be in focus. Try making several images each with a different aperture to see how that changes the mood of your image.

Is the shutter speed helping you capture or stop motion? In forest photography you might think that you’d want to show trees as steadfast and solid. Trees don’t move – they stay in one place from sapling to collapse. And that may just be the story you want to tell. But is it the only story? Watch trees and you will see them sway in the breeze, bobbing their heads to an unheard beat. So, play with the dichotomy of solid trees that shiver with the slightest caress of a breeze by slowing down your shutter speed and let tittering trees become the focus. Another fun exercise with slower shutter speeds is to use intentional camera movement to create abstract images of the forest.

Did you remember to bring your tripod and polarizing filter? Two indispensable accessories not to leave behind are your tripod and polarizing filter. I darker forests, when your shutter speed is slow, you will want your tripod to reduce camera shake. Avoid the disappointment of having spent the day in the forest photographing verdant beauty to get home to see unintentionally blurry photos. Use a tripod. The other accessory, the polarizing filter, comes in very handy in the forest to help reduce the glare of reflected light off leaves. Using a polarizer can help bring richer, more saturated color to your image by reducing the reflective glare.

Did you perform border patrol? Your final act before releasing the shutter is to perform border patrol. This is one of those tasks to undertake in all landscape photography. Border patrol is to check the edges of your image to make sure there are no distracting elements coming into the frame. This was once far more important in film photography since you can easily clone out distractions in your editing software. But it is a good habit to get into. Sometimes a gentle shift of camera position can take out the distraction without disturbing your composition eliminating the need to fix it in post. Also, fixing those distraction in forest photography can be cumbersome with different branches and leaves that may not clone out as well.

With practice, forest photography turns into joy and meditation. Spend time exploring the forest.