What a wet and windy winter it’s been for us here in the southeast of England. Minimal frost, no snow at all and what seemed to be day after day of high winds and rain. Another example of global warming or just a milder winter? Probably both, but for someone who enjoys mild, uneventful conditions to photograph woodland, it means I’ve spent very little time photographing my local forest recently. Sure, I miss it, but on the bright side, it means I have spent a bit more time in London, photographing the cityscape and working on my Timeless City project. So, not too bad really. That’s the good thing about having more than one photographic interest; when conditions aren’t ideal for one subject, I can still find something to photograph that interests me. I may not like photographing the woodland in high winds and rain, but I’m happy to put a raincoat on and take some moody urban cityscapes in London.

Between the long periods of inclement weather, there has (thankfully) been one or two brief interludes where the weather has been calm with conditions more to my liking, and just one or two coincided with my availability to head out into the forest with my camera. So, in the spirit of publishing more pictures from my adventures and avoiding those pesky social media algorithms, here’s a new bite-sized, on-location blog post featuring some of the photos I took on one of those rare winter woodland walks.

This trip to the forest took place in December last year, a time when the last of the autumn leaves were just about clinging on. It was cold, misty and frost was underfoot outside the woodland on the open heath. The first two compositions above were quite new to me, only spotted in the weeks leading up to this morning and with the arrangement, the soft defused light and uncluttered background, I think they work well in these conditions.

No trip to this part of the forest would be complete without a visit to an old friend or two. So, while exploring the forest, I wandered over to this woodland character I first met in the spring. I love the way the tree seems to be posing for the photo, anthropomorphically spreading its arms wide towards the camera in readiness to have its picture taken.

A misty woodland scene photographed in the winter by Trevor Sherwin — Fujifilm XT5 | XF16-55mm | 26mm | 1/2 Second | f/7.1 | ISO125

You may have noticed most of the photos in this article are square and that’s because, over the last 12-18 months, I’ve become a little obsessed with using this aspect ratio. Truth be told, I’m still working out the finer details as to why this is as it has been more of an instinctive change in my compositional approach to my landscape, woodland and cityscape photography. I touch on this a little in my recent Timeless City introductory post, but when I’ve given it a bit more thought, I plan to write about it in a future article, so if that’s of any interest to you, do keep an eye out for it.

Finishing off my woodland walk, I started to walk back to the car park, stopping off briefly to take this photo below of a young, frosty birch sapling. Ordinarily, it’s a bit of a messy composition, but the subdued tones and misty background help keep the focus on the tree. Along with the subject, I like the colour pallet in the scene, particularly the frosty orange leaves and ferns set against the cooler ice and mist. A pleasant photo in my opinion.

A wintry, misty photo of a young sapling tree taken by Trevor Sherwin — Fujifilm XT5 | XF16-55mm | 28mm | 1/10th Second | f/9 | ISO125

At the time of writing, spring is fast approaching, so unless we get a late flurry of frosty weather here in the south of England, the next on-location woodland blog post will be jam-packed with lush spring greens, flowery meadows, surrounded by mist and basking in soft, defused light.

Well, we must remain optimistic, right?

Until next time.
Trevor

Walking a Winter Woods

My Camera Gear for Landscape Photography in 2024

A Year Amongst Trees by Brad Carr | My Photo Bookshelf