The Forest of Dean
Woodland Colours
According to Wikipedia the Forest of Dean or just ‘The Forest’ to locals is approximately 42 square miles of mixed woodland. Wikipedia is a little ambiguous but suggests it’s an ancient woodland. Maybe my expectation is misplaced but I expect an ancient woodland to contain at least some ancient/old trees but those I’ve seen all look pretty young. Where are those trees with large diameter trunks and that have been gnarled by the passage of time? If you know, please drop me a message :-) :-)
Like any ‘working’ forest large swathes are planted to maximise timber. In these places the trees are often packed together making it hard to pull photographs from the resulting complexity. Early this year I found a small deciduous tree growing on the edge of some evergreens and made a note to return in the Autumn as I thought it had potential. In late summer I returned only to find the area ‘devastated’ by logging activity. Many of the evergreens were just stumps and the ground was a mass of deep vehicle tracks. The deciduous tree was still there but it was a shadow of its former self with many limbs ripped away and branches broken.
But I don’t want to be overly negative about The Forest as there are many places, see the photographs in this post, where the trees are more separated and where the ground has been ‘tidied’ by the indigenous population of wild boar. The boar almost continually disturb the ground whilst rooting for food which keeps the smaller vegetation down and results in more open spaces. They also seem to push the fallen branches into clumps, presumably to root in the ground below. From a photography perspective both these outcomes are good news :-) One of these days I’d like to see the boar - from a distance ;-) - just confirm what I take to be their activity but I’ve not seen any and suspect they sleep in quieter corners of the forest by day. But walking through the forest away from human tracks I’m always a little mindful of them…
Natural Woodland
Similar to my experience of scouting woodland near Wickwar, scouting identified areas in which to concentrate and areas to avoid. It didn’t really identify potential compositions for Autumn due to the masking effect of green foliage. Come Autumn, once the veil of green foliage has thinned, there are yellow and red leaves, the skeleton of the tree exposed, the overall composition looks very, very different. My take away here is to not try and find compositions during the summer but just identify broad areas with potential.
You may have noticed that many of my recent woodland photographs are cropped to a square. This crop and a panoramic 16:9 crop seem to work well for woodland photography as they can omit distractions such as sky, nearby trees etc. One of the benefits I’ve realised with a Medium Format 4:3 ratio camera is that there is less pixel wastage when cropping to a square than with a Full Frame 3:2 ratio. This has to be good news when making large prints as I want the majority of pixels, of information in the actual photograph. I do find myself increasing thinking about cameras with a 1:1 aspect ratio. In the digital world those are well outside my budget but film… Mmm, that’s a possibility and a whole different post :-)
Andy
