Friday 9 June 2017

Normanshill Wood - Photography Week 19 (2017)

Over the last month, I have set out a couple times to capture the new spring growth in the local woods and forests. There is a period of time when the greens are vibrant and the canopy is not dense enough to block too much of the light.

One of my favourite trees to photograph in these conditions are beech trees and I spotted, whilst taking a detour around road works, a great section of wood which I believe is called Little Normanshill Wood. I probably ended up taking too many photographs at this location but it had some characteristics which made it ideal for capturing the trees and the colour.

Firstly, many of the compositions could be lined up without too many light holes. Often when photographing trees, particularly in portrait format, there are patches of sky in between the leaves which are hard to expose correctly. Filters don't help as they darken the trees as well as the sky - in other words there is no clear horizon. In this location many of compositions had other trees in the background and this helped to balance the exposures and reduce the need for correction in post processing. I think I also mentioned in a previous post that greens need to be treated very carefully in image software to avoid the appearance of any eye jarring 'digital greens'.

Secondly, there were trees of different ages including many young trees. This provided variety in terms of shape and composition including many leaves near to ground level:














Just as I was packing away the light changed and I started a new series of shots. Normally, I prefer flat lighting conditions for woodland photography but on this occasion the sunlight was not too strong and worked well with several of the compositions:










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