Free woodland photography guides
Free guides to help you see the woods differently.
A growing collection of free guides and resources, from practical field tips and camera settings to editing methods, creative prompts and honest questions about your own work. Each one is something I worked out in the woods myself, written to help you slow down and make more considered woodland photographs.
Honest questions for your work
Where are you in your work?
A self-assessment for photographers at every stage of their practice.
Not a set of tips, but a set of honest questions. Three phases, moving from the individual image, to the body of work, to the direction of the practice itself. There are no scores and no verdicts. What you cannot answer yet simply marks the edge of where your work currently reaches, and that edge is worth knowing. Wherever you find yourself in these pages, that is the right place to start.
The practical guides
Field tips, settings and editing help.
Taming the chaos: the key to better woodland composition.
One real woodland scene, worked from a first failed frame to the picture that finally held. A process for finding order in the tangle, not another set of rules.
Transform your woodland photos with simple editing techniques.
Five practical edits that bring a woodland image to life without overdoing it: better contrast, cleaner colour, the right amount of polish.
The woodland camera settings fix (cheat sheet).
A one-page field guide to reliable starting points for ISO, aperture and shutter in the most common woodland light, from fog to dappled sun.
The wood you already have.
You do not need to travel for your strongest photographs. Three lessons for making a portfolio from one ordinary wood near home, returned to across the seasons.
Five quiet ways to feel more at home in the woods.
Your photographs do not look like the place that stopped you. Five quiet moves, from looking to seeing to making, that begin to close the gap.
Woodland pre-shoot checklist, plus five short lessons.
What to pack, wear and plan, season by season, so discomfort never ends a shoot early. Then five short lessons by email.
From Mud to Magic: the essential woodland RAW fix.
Most woodland edits fail before you touch a slider. A simple four-curve RAW prep method that gives you a clean, flexible base to build on.
Mindful photography prompts for planning and reflection.
A page of quiet questions before your walk in the woods, and a page after. A few minutes at either end of a morning, so it counts for more than the pictures.
Take it further
Every guide here started as something I worked out for myself, in the woods, the hard way.