From a photography perspective woodland, including forests, are chaotic, hard to photograph places. The techniques required are common to photography generally, especially Landscape, but I believe observation especially important as it’s foundational to identifying compositions in messy woodland environments.

Last year I started to explore ‘The Forest’ as it’s known to locals. This summer I spent lots of time exploring a handful of areas with a mind for Autumn woodland photography. This really helped identify those places that didn’t have potential meaning I could focus on selected areas during the Autumn period.

Avoiding the temptation of arboretums, I made a concerted effort this year to explore somewhere not far away, somewhere I really should know much, much better. The Forest of Dean is about 15 miles away and sits between Chepstow and Ross-on-Wye on the Western side of the river Severn. This year I started by thinking carefully about why previous trips hadn't worked and what I could do better.