Is forest photography a more difficult genre of landscape photography?
I keep seeing anecdotal reports around the web from photographers who say they find woodlands one of the most difficult habitats to produce good landscape photos from.
Obviously one person's challenge is another person's piece of cake, but I'm curious if this is a majority opinion, or a false impression.
As we have a global community here and endless variation in what our local forests might look like, if there are any, this is of course in extremely general terms. But if you do find it more difficult to take photos in the woods. I'd be fascinated to learn what you think the specific challenges are.
All thoughts welcome. :)
EDIT I'd just like to add one thing, which is that I am not seeking advice on how to shoot woodlands. It seems something in the tone of my above post may have created a false impression that this is the case. I'm simply interested in where other people think the problems arise that are specific to the forest environment. Thanks :)
I certainly agree that they are difficult in general, David. It takes somewhat sparse or unusual forest, or an especially good eye to find satisfying compositions, as the profusion of growth tends to create a visual chaos.
John Sexton's "Listen to the Trees" is a notable exception, and Peter Dombrovskis managed this genre well. There are plenty of good examples, but they are far outnumbered by images of more open territory, vistas and the like.
I love woodland, and photography of landscape and nature, but rarely manage satisfactory images of pure woodland. The only image of mine I'm happy with is this one from my portfolio, where foreground branches formed iinteresting, interacting forms and the background was fairly uniform, and it all still took quite a lot of post-processing to get it to look right.
One reason it worked is because the branches overhung falling ground, so shrubs and grasses didn't poke up into view, while the ground rose further away again, providing a leafy backdrop rather than glary sky.
Thanks for your reply Chris, and that's a lovely photo. What you've said about 'visual chaos' is quite interesting - this is essentially the same thing I see others say.
If you haven't already, David, try it yourself, and you'll quickly see.
Thanks man. To be honest I am myself already very comfortable shooting woodland (I hesitate to say this at first as I don't want to seem arrogant). But I really want to hear what aspects of it people struggle with so I can give some thought to creating some relevant educational content.
Btw thanks for the book suggestions above, I've had a look on google and these look amazing.
Didn't think to look at your portfolio, David. Duhh... I thought you were a newbie, from your tone and lack of an image. Nice work - mostly open vistas!
;-)
I think the "problem" frequently spoken of refers to shooting forest from within, surrounded by trees and undergrowth, not so much in open woodland with space between trees, which makes composition easier.
just beginning a series of woodland images. Yeah I think photographing in forests is difficult for a few reasons. Firstly there is often a great range of light and shade in a dense woodland environment. I say the trick to overcoming this is to decide which part to focus on and understand how the light source works. Photographing the canopy or the forest floor involve different problems and solutions. Light is everything in such settings. The whole scene will just be flat without an understanding of this.
Secondly and to me more importantly is composition, it so easy to lose the point of interest among the density, so I always ask myself why this scene and not that. I'm photographing the series in b/w so strong composition is all the more necessary.. if you have a descent lens and have a good range of f.stops I would suggest moving to both extremes in a single shot to see the (quite markedly) difference to each approach.
Hope this is useful. The series so far can be viewed here on flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/karl_hurst/
Thanks for your thoughts Karl, it's nice to see the woods in black and white for a change.
I agree 100% that light is the most important crucial; it always is. I'm intrigued that you rate composition as more important, though I can see the strength of this in your portfolio. You have an interesting eye for things.
Another two bob's worth! I'd rate composition over light, as it is absolutely essential as far as I can see to a good image. Obviously light can be problematic with high contrast, but the usually undesirable "flat" light can work well, especially in the "busy" forest scenes. Glorious light, such as in your own portfolio favourite, or sunbeams in mist, can of course be the basis of an outstanding image - which could be ruined with bad composition.
I know you can't see it, but be assured I have my thinking face on. Thanks!
Yeah, that's what I was trying to hint at. I think it is possible to compensate for poor light but harder to adjust poor composition.
I'm fairly new to photography having only picked up my camera exactly one year ago; my main interest is in nature photography though I enjoy other genres as well.
Straight up woodland photography, I feel, is definitely the most difficult to tackle; or at least right up there with tiny birds in flight, in the wild.
Composition is the difficult part while in the woodlands; that is, unless there is a clear subject (but that's very uncommon). I have found that going to the macro level in woodlands helps immensely as subjects and focal points can be defined easier... but that might be classified as a sub-category of woodland photography.