Friday 3 March 2017

Blidworth Woods - Photography Week 6 (2017)

Photographing trees in woods and forests has been a recurring theme over the last couple of months and there are plenty of different places to visit across the Newark and Sherwood district of Nottinghamshire.

At one time many of these wooded areas would have formed part of the greater Sherwood Forest landscape although, contrary to what is often portrayed in the legend of Robin Hood, the majority of the Sherwood was actually heathland rather than one large dense woodland forest. From the early 1800's a mixture of farming, forestry plantation and urban development fragmented the forest resulting in a 90% decline in the heathland areas.

There is an interesting map on the Sherwood Forest Trust website which shows the extent of the fragmentation since 1787 together with details of their excellent preservation work. Additional information about the preservation of Sherwood heathlands can be found on The Wildlife Trust's website.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, selecting compositions from a mass of complexity is the challenge when photographing in the forest areas. Going back to familiar locations in different conditions and training the eye to see through complexity is part of meeting that challenge. The aim is to represent everyday woodland scenes in way that the casual observer might miss but would enjoy seeing through photography.

In this set there are few that I particularly like, mainly due to the brief appearance of direct sunlight, and then some muted tones after the sun went down:












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