What Is Woodland Photography?

Most often it is not technique but mindfulness and presence: whether you are really focused, or darting around the wood like a headless chicken. The less considered your approach, the more you struggle. Technique problems are solvable with practice and tuition; the harder shift is to slow down and, counter-intuitively, to accept it is fine to go home with no keepers.

I was that person once. I could make a lot of frames with few worth keeping, and those that were came from luck rather than judgement. The slowing started with digital, and took hold with 4x5 film, where at around £8 a sheet every exposure concentrated the mind. Once I slowed down, my hit rate went from one in twenty to nine in ten, with a good crop of significant images in a year. I do not use the small 1 or 2GB cards now, but when I am making lots of images and finding none satisfying, they are the first thing I turn to: a card fills in minutes, imposing the discipline film's cost once did. For more, see the challenges post.

There is no single right answer, but the best camera for woodland photography is the one you know so well it becomes invisible and never slows you down. For a lens, start with a standard zoom; if your camera came with a kit lens, that will be more than adequate to begin with.

I do recommend a tripod too, if only to slow you down. That might sound odd next to wanting the camera invisible, but the two are different: being slowed by a tripod is a conscious choice, while being slowed because you are fighting your camera's controls takes attention away from the picture. I shoot with zooms today and still use my feet. If I am going through a slow patch, I will force myself to work within one or two focal lengths in the range, to slow down and think hard about what is and is not going in the frame. For how different lenses behave in a wood, see the focal length guide, and for choosing a tripod, the tripod guide.

The settings matter less than the thinking behind them, but as a starting point I shoot in aperture priority and, in most conditions, use a little negative exposure compensation, especially with a camera made in the last seven or eight years. The reason is simple: you need to protect the highlights more than the shadows.

Modern sensors hold a lot of dynamic range, but the priority is always holding the brighter parts of the scene. For the full walk-through of how I meter and set exposure under the canopy, see the camera settings guide.

The honest answer is that the rules of composition tend to break down in the woods, but not for the reason you might think. They were never really rules, just a series of tools to help the viewer make sense of what they are seeing.

I would rather think of a toolbox full of tools, and use more than one of them to make a single image. The tools are things like near and far separation, balance, tension, contrast, energy, visual flow and keeping the frame edges clean, not the rule of thirds or leading lines. The one piece of advice that always made me chuckle in my early days was "break the rules", which only told me everything above it could sap the creativity out of a budding photographer. I would rather use human perception as my guide, making photographs to be looked at rather than photographs that obey a checklist. For the concepts I actually use, see the composition basics guide.

The usual cause is that too much of the wood is in the frame, and the fix is a narrower frame, which lets you focus your efforts on simplification. Because the angle of view covers a much smaller part of the woods, you have far more control over what is in the frame, what is left out, and how you arrange those elements in a pleasing way.

It is a bit like getting your first prime lens and shooting everything wide open, so only your subject is in focus. A narrower frame has a similar effect, but more than that, it trains you to really think about what the image is about and what you are trying to communicate. To go further, see how to simplify busy woodland scenes.

Everyone says fog is the holy grail, and it is, but the trap is believing it is the only condition worth photographing woodland in. The truth is you can make woodland photographs in almost any weather.

I love working in the rain, and I enjoy exploring the woods in overcast light in the middle of the day. Some of my favourite images were made on an early start on a bright, cloudless morning. You can compose a scene beautifully and still have the light make or break the image. For how each type of weather changes a wood, see the best weather guide.

The beauty of the woods is that you can photograph them at almost any time of day, as long as there is enough light under the canopy, and the conditions matter far more than the hour. In rain or overcast light you can make compelling images at midday, without waiting for golden hour at all. I often head out early, but more to avoid the crowds than anything.

As for seasons, each one has its own merits, and there is something to photograph in the woods all through the year. People naturally gravitate to the spring wildflowers, and especially the bluebells, or the fiery colours of autumn, but summer brings foxgloves, herb robert, enchanter's nightshade, honeysuckle and dense foliage, and winter opens up the bare structure of the trees. If I had to pick one, it would be winter, both for that bare structure and for the sheer variety of conditions it brings. It is a great time to be out. For how to make the most of the timing, see the best time guide.

The simplest method is to get an Ordnance Survey map of your local area, pick a wood, and go for a thirty to forty-five minute walk without a camera, then repeat until you have worked through your local patch or found a wood that inspires you. It costs nothing but a little time.

Most of the woods I photograph, I found exactly this way, and some I simply drove past and thought looked worth an hour of exploring on foot. Woodland photography does not have to be an all-day or weekend outing either; in a local wood it can be a couple of hours before breakfast on a morning when you are working from home. A good map is really the only tool you need to start, and you can get one from Ordnance Survey. For more on choosing and getting to know local woods, see the local woods guide.

The longer you visit the same wood, the more you get to know it, and the deeper that relationship becomes, the more fruitful the place becomes. Woodland photography is, at heart, about a relationship with a place. The moment you get a good frame is often when the growth happens, and it could be the start of the trajectory you are on toward fulfilling your potential as a photographer and an artist.

Sometimes it takes many visits before the pictures begin to reveal themselves. I first visited some of my most productive locations years before they became productive for me, but once a place finally clicked, I was able to make a portfolio of significant images spread right across the seasons within a few years. If you are just starting, the most useful thing you can do is pick one wood and keep going back. For why I would start with a single wood, see the beginners guide.

The short version is to edit locally rather than globally, but there is more to it than that, and a surprising amount rests on RAW preparation, which is easily overlooked. If the foundations are wrong, everything you build on top of them is harder, so I like to start from a very neutral RAW file and build up step by step.

The feeling comes back in the shaping. I work on restoring the light in the scene, dodging and burning to guide the eye, and adding subtle micro-contrast to the parts of the frame I want to draw attention to. For my full process, see the editing workflow.