Fairy tale woodlands!

As I write this my two week spring holiday is over and I am back to my day job. I managed to get some really nice conditions for woodland photography during my time off, with several mornings of mist or fog and some beautiful light too. On Sunday I had a Daddy daughter day with my youngest, doing something a little different to my usual brand of photography, shooting cars. Some of my long time readers will know that I have a passion for motors and it is a subject matter I have explored in the past. A local motor museum puts on a meet once a month, the theme this time being sports cars and there were some stunning hunks of metal on display when we arrived!

This V12 Vantage was a particular favourite of mine on the day!

But I digress, you are here for trees not cars. On the Friday we had another forecast for mist/fog and I decided to head over to a hilly Beech wood, which the last time I visited was during a heavy snowstorm. It always delivers and today was going to be no exception. It is populated with bluebells this time of year, not the carpets you see from other woodlands, more patchy and scattered. But among these giant Beeches it adds another element to the compositions and is definitely the time of year for me when the wood looks at its best, especially shrouded in a canopy of fresh green leaves.

I arrived just after 5am, startling a fox in the field opposite the parking area. She briefly looked at me, wondering if I was a threat before turning and hightailing it to the safety of the tree line. Always a spectacular animal to see. I slurped away on my coffee as I pondered the steep climb to the woods above. My knee was already muttering vulgar curse words under its breath, not recovered yet from the previous days shenanigans but I chose to ignore it along with my lungs which were threatening an outright riot if I was going to attempt the climb again! I grabbed the gear from the boot, locked up the motor and with a determined glint in my eye headed up the hill.

I was about halfway up when I realised I could clearly see the top of the wood which of course meant no mist. It was all around me at the base but the ascent took me from its gossamer embrace into a world where the blue skies were visible above me and the glow of the predawn sun was a yellow band to the east. It was that light that got me excited though. I knew if I got there early enough and the mist didnt appear, I had the potential for some nice light, hence the ridiculous arrival time.

This scene and that light was getting me excited for what was further up the hill.

I stopped to take the above image and was pleased to see the light was indeed helping me out. The lack of mist wouldnt be an issue this morning.

Once clear of the tighter path the climb opens up into an avenue of massive Beeches, 150 plus years old and oozing character. One was down from the last time I visited, a casualty of high winds during the winter but luckily it had fallen away from the main path so didn’t obstruct the climb. This section was the part I wanted to focus on this morning before the sun came up and made everything too harsh and contrasty.

Edited using a new preset I am working on.

As I am going full time with my photography next year, one of the potential income streams I am doing is releasing a set of woodland presets for Lightroom. I have several that I am fine tuning at the moment and one of them is this painterly effect you can see I have used in the above image. It really suits these softly lit scenes such as these ones and it makes me feel like a wolf inexplicably dressed like a little old lady is lurking somewhere in the scene!

I spent the next thirty minutes racing (yes you read that correctly!) up and down this hill as the light changed, grabbing as many compositions as I could in the beautiful soft light. I left my camera bag at the top of the hill, praying that no one else was about who might potentially steal it such as a gnome, pixie or early morning dog walker! It was a frantic, glorious 30 minutes of photography and I feel the images I got were by far the best from my holiday.

This one was looking back down the hill. the dandelions among the bluebells really added to the fairytale feel of this scene.

In other news I have finalised my submissions for this years Natural Landscape Photography awards. I have six images to submit but am also toying with entering a project too. I havn’t yet worked out the theme for the project and may not do it this year. I have no expectations of my work being awarded, although I did come close last year with one of my submissions. Its a big competition so to get anywhere near the top echelons would be a heck of an achievement!

I have also managed to put together a vlog kit as I want to get back into doing Youtube again. I know the YT boat sailed a long time ago and its not how it was but shorts and reels could still work. I would like to do some short form videos on how I edit my images and also why and how I pick out the scenes among the chaos of a wood or forest. I hope to start posting these in the next couple of weeks.

Also dont forget that ALL my images are available as prints, please feel free to message me if you would like to purchase one to hang on your wall at home or the office.

Thats it for this week.

Toodles!