Autumnal Woodland | Weekly Photo #74
Along with a trip to the Sky Garden in London, this week, I’ve been out and about on the hunt for some autumnal woodland scenes in my local forest. For the last few years, London and urban cityscapes have been my main focus and as such, autumnal colours never really played a big part in my photography but since venturing into the world of woodland photography, capturing those autumn colours has been high on my photography to-do list and as the colours only last for a couple of weeks, I’ve been travelling into the forest as often as I can to take my own autumnal woodland photo.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 105mm | 1/8th Second | f/6.4 | ISO320
So, on this particular morning, I set out while it was still dark and arrived at the car park just as the sun was rising and headed off into Ashdown Forest in Sussex. Unfortunately, as much as I hoped, I wasn’t blessed with a calm, misty morning, but I was still confident that even without that beautiful defused light, I could still seek out a woodland image that featured those bold, autumnal colours I wanted to capture.
My aim was to follow a pre-determined route through the woods and just photograph what caught my eye and an hour or so into the shoot I came across this spot that was full of these copper coloured ferns and orange and yellow leaves spread right across scene. It had just the kind of seasonal colours I was after so out came my tripod to set up the shot. The leaves appear to flow through the image from right to left until the point they arrive at the brighter silver birch trees, purposely placed on the left hand third to act as the main focal point and add some contrast to help break up the colour and give the eye a place to rest.
The challenge I had when taking this photo was the strong wind that was blowing through the forest. With the low light and gusts of wind, there was no way I was going to get a completely blur-free image so I deliberately kept my ISO lower at 320 and just embraced the motion blur that was captured in parts of the image, particularly around the ferns in the foreground.
So, with the circular polariser attached to break through any reflective light and give the scene an extra punch of colour, albeit at the cost of an even slower shutter speed, I took the shot.
Back in Adobe Lightroom, I worked on making a feature of the colours, being mindful not to move those sliders too far to the right and with a slight crop to remove a few distractions near the end of the frame, I was left with the final image you can see here.
I know photography like this is very subjective and this photo will no doubt split opinions, but I guess many of my photos do. If we all liked the same thing, life would be boring but I wouldn’t be staying true to myself and my photography if I just posted what I thought people wanted to look at. The only brief I have is to take photos I like and want to share and if it’s received well, that’s fantastic, but if not, then there is always next week’s photo to look forward too.
The weather forecast for the south of England is looking particularly wet and miserable this week and although time is running out, I remain hopeful that I will get another opportunity to head into the woodland and capture those autumn colours once more before they disappear for another year.
Cheers
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.