The DOs and DON'Ts of WOODLAND PHOTOGRAPHY

I go through my good and bad compositions from a trip to some woodlands without any fog.
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[@MadsPeterIversen]

A photographer in the field talking about his photos when taking them - definitely my favorite type of landscape videos! Also, great photos as always, buddy :D

[@DanielAucoinFineArt]

I agree Mads! Everything starts on location !😉👍

[@NigelDanson]

Mine too! Thanks Mads...

[@oscarhagelberg7895]

I just had a perfect start to the day; a morning walk in fine weather, freshly baked bread with my favorite jam and Nigel Danson talking about woodland photography.

[@holgerkroger889]

7:58 a dream picture and what a beautiful location 🤩

[@NigelDanson]

Thanks so much!

[@markscutt7471]

Nice one.. going to be my new project starting tomorrow. Thanks for tips

[@viaconqueso]

It's so helpful watching you work and listening to your thought process. I appreciate how you're open about when you're in doubt about how a shot will turn out. That shot at 7:56 is my favorite of this video. Thank you!

[@rickbrowne519]

The photo you thought was too cluttered really appealed to me. It was so suggestive of the area.

[@julesgardet659]

Hey Nigel, “Messy” in nature is still beautiful. Your photos are amazing.

[@jensharp3722]

I’ve recently come across your channel and as a beginner photographer who loves woodland (‘bush’ here in Australia) I’m learning so much from your videos. Thanks so much

[@LeeAllen337]

The one you said was to clutterd at 6:00 I think was really good. I liked that one.

[@NigelDanson]

Yes - it is growing on me as well

[@MaartenBrys]

Bedankt

[@rosssayer6524]

Some amazing Images Nigel, great location. I thought the image at 9:38 stood out for me, well done and thanks for taking us along on this woodland shoot.

[@MrJason8957]

I was in the process of making a book of a recent trip with Saal when I saw this video. Glad to see an endorsement. Thanks

[@NigelDanson]

You won't be disappointed

[@craigstevens7113]

I adore the shot at 06:05 The fact that it's cluttered is what makes it for me. It could be Le Val Sans Retour from Arthurian legend.

[@NigelDanson]

yeah - I was hot and cold about that shot

[@paulduckworth1121]

Great video Nigel, many thanks. Looking forwards to FotoFest and seeing you presenting - I've been a number of times previously and it's always a good day out.

[@anthonybrigden1298]

Great advice thank you, off to the woods todays first propper atempt at woodland photography.

[@randyschwager2515]

As always, great advice! You have access to so many wonderful places! Your photos are superb! Thanks for taking me along!

[@erichbrunner6157]

You really are good at explaining complicated composition. This helps me since I have a lot of woodland areas where I live in the States; but I have trouble composing and not having things be too busy. Thanks. Erich Brunner

[@davidcrossley7145]

The fourth photo I think is superb love it 👍

[@juergenbaumann8817]

nice one, thanks for sharing your insights. and good to see that I am not the only one chasing fields of wild garlic, was a good hunting season ;) loved the silence in the woodlands, probably because of the light rain and no one else was crazy enough to run into the forest.

[@hilleviupmanis8687]

Thank you!

[@joanl3115]

Thank you for sharing your expertise, concepts, rationale for the image, and settings! Magical images 👏🖼. Very helpful ‼️

[@adventurecoalition3690]

Great tips👍Great photos Thanks for sharing your experiences and knowledge, much appreciated

[@aurainfocus]

Very inspiring, thank you! I've been doing a lot of work with my telephoto getting wildlife, but perhaps this spring I'll get back to my roots some and do some more woodland photography :)

[@desgardner7169]

Very good Nigel, Thank you.....

[@TimSimmons-q1b]

Great video with very interesting tips about woodland photography, the images are excellent as well

[@LauraRachelCannon]

Really enjoy your videos, leaning is at the forefront. Super helpful content. Loved the complex woodland pic.

[@anthonyplancherel8274]

Gorgeous photos and great tips! 👍🏻

[@jimtrull683]

I look forward to your videos every Sunday morning. They always bring a smile to my face plus I get to learn something that will help me become a better photographer. The positive attitude you take to your work I believe helps with your work. We can all learn from that.

[@SueFerreira75]

Wonderful - I can smell the garlic. Love the photo with the fallen trees.

[@paulfowler3416]

Very helpful indeed, thank you.

[@hamsterneckliving]

I really like this shot. 9:39 Nice!

[@aaronpalaian9116]

Really great video Nigel. Loved it. Your work is inspiring.

[@juliabyczynski3253]

Wow! Thats a beautiful woodland and I can almost smell the wild garlic. New to your channel and really enjoying. I have just started a project and I am looking for inspiration. Struggling with compositions.

[@pmc7105]

Possible future video idea: The struggle of keeping the angle of the trees correct while shooting low for a foreground element, while also trying to avoid sky hotspots. The hill helps, and the shift lens might as well (I've been considering getting a shift lens for forest photography). Great video.

[@NigelDanson]

Yes - I have to admit I wish I had taken my tilt shift lens

[@pingao1841]

The photo book is amazing. Maybe you can add a bit information on each photo like where and when did you take it, what was the camera setting...

[@tomasbordi362]

I love this!

[@davidqueenan]

I wish I had seen this before I went to the Bluebell woods at Kinclaven yesterday - harsh light, no mist and the bluebells probably just past their best

[@andrewmillott3402]

You’re one of my favorite KZbinrs, especially for woodland photography. It’s a shame that so many photographers are putting up the same garlic and bluebell shoots the last few weeks. I appreciate your different approach.

[@NigelDanson]

Thanks

[@Brock_in_the_North]

It's that time of year and only grows in small pockets through most of our woodlands. Hence, they look very similar and are usually along well-defined paths.

[@jamespritchett82]

Appreciate this. Seems that every woodland photography video is shot during mist, which seems rare where I live and with a full time job the chances are even when it is misty I can't be out in it!

[@scotty4418]

Lovely images Nigel, really liked the one you selected for print. My 24mm tilt shift is rarely out my camera bag these days.

[@kevins8575]

These are beautiful images of a beautiful forest. Very pleasant to follow along with you. I'm always surprised that you don't use a tilt/shift.

[@nadianicoletaa]

Anyone else noticed the subtitles at 10:54?

[@senseofeverthing]

Dear Nigel, I think the pictures with the paths would have probably worked better if the camera was closer to the ground (and with mist, but that's something you said yourself)

[@PaulCoggins-eh6vq]

Hi Nigel, thanks for your video - another very helpful one. I have noted down your tips and will bare them in mind next time I am out. I often try to take good photos in woodlands but struggle most of the time. I have an Olympus OMD5 EM3 markIII which is good enough for me I reckon, so feel I can't blame the camera!

[@elysiumfire4230]

Please explain how the sun can rise over the west coast of England? I'm pretty certain it rises in the North East during Summer, and South East in Winter, which puts it on the opposite coast of England. Nice photos, by the way.

[@benthompson9717]

I enjoyed this presentation. With the woodland shots and so much green, what do you do with your white balance, or do you fix everything in post? I prefer to fix things in the camera so before post ever starts, I already have a good representation of what I saw on that day.

[@AndersBjornTH]

At (0:22) It is fantastic that you can see me. 😊

[@NigelDanson]

I know right!

[@carlgough7839]

Always have a go on the swing 😅

[@sbshutterbug]

Great video as always. I’d love to see a video on how you use a tilt shift lens. I’m considering buying one and am interested in knowing which lens you have. Thanks

[@NigelDanson]

I will do one!

[@artdawggy]

A couple of things: First, I notice you shoot at 64 ASA a lot. That is quite low for such a modern camera. What is the reason you choose that? It is always great to hear an artist vocalise their thought process while working. I did have a thought for another video though. It would be interesting to see what gear you choose to bring on such an excursion. What was in that black backpack you were carrying?

[@frank1crayon]

Nicely done, Nigel, as usual. It seems, more often than not, you switch between f10-11. What is your decision process for switching between such micro variations in f-stop?

[@RobbSutherland]

Really like the look of the books. I did one trip with Blurb and I’m half way through putting another one together in lightroom. What interface does Saal use?

[@tjsinva]

Nice! 👍🥂

[@themarksmanABP]

Great video. Where is this woodland? Where did you enter? Great location for family and pet shoots

[@davidletz9123]

"Things are looking a bit messy..." Messy? Nigel, you haven't seen "messy" until you've visited the "local woodlands" near where I live. Now THAT'S messy!! Nice images!

[@NigelDanson]

😂

[@rajeshmuthuswamy7339]

As always great video and always love to see your thought process on how you make a shot. Just a question, how do you decide on what aperture to use as I see combination of apertures used in each photo.

[@jvkperspective]

Thank you! I always struggle with woodlands. They seem so messy to me... your explanations in the field are really exceptional and I will try to apply what I learned here next time I am out in the woods. :)

[@mariebird01]

Thank you for sharing your timely info on shooting woodland, and also sharing your wonderful images. I always feel well rested and in-tune with mother earth, looking at your videos. Thank you. I notice your use of the polariser filter, and hope you don't mind me asking... I took a few hundred images using a polariser filter on my lenses last weekend, for a local river race, shooting Cornish Pilot gig teams rowing their way round the course. I was a little disappointed with the results, in that there seemed to be some image softening, (a very slight lens blur), whereas my images are normally pretty sharp. When using a polarising filter, should I have taken into account the extra thickness of glass, in front the lens and somehow compensated the focus?

[@thomastuorto9929]

Great vid, nice photos. Definitely the hardest of landscapes to do, IMHO. What T/S lens did you end up getting? Thanks for any replies.

[@martharetallick204]

Rain? What is that? Waiting for the monsoon season to start in Arizona.

[@jpdj2715]

Great exploration, Nigel. The still image at 11:22 has the trees all vertical, but the video preceding this still clearly looks down and has diverging lines (trees) from a camera not being "level". That is not a problem, because the looking down was needed to get the proper amount of foreground in the frame, while the video is shot at eye level of the ND person talking to us. So, what did you do to get the still image? Set the camera level at a slightly wider angle and then crop the top? Or lower the camera for the still relative to the video point of view to get a similar foreground but be level? Or make a perspective correction in post?

[@NigelDanson]

I corrected in PS afterwards - but I find that only works when you have room to crop

[@agnieszkakj8867]

Ted, I see your bagpack is not to small but accurate - what brand is that?

[@freemanligon1177]

Nigel Danson I really want to develop into a good photographer but just feel I am not getting there. Be doing photography on and off for last six years or so. Really just get 10 or 12 good photography a year. Sometime less. I really don't have confidence in photo editing as I sit there thinking, is this good or not, not just my perspective, also think about whether it is photo worthy for photo club print competition. I used lightroom, and ON1. I thought I could get photography opportunities while on vacation but being on vacation really don't allow time to really look for composition, really take the time to find a good composition. I took over 500 photos but a hand full of good photos. They are really tourist photos. anyway, I don't know any more, just frustrated. I love taking my camera, clicked away but when I look at them, I feel like I have a step backwards. I have an answer except keep trying. I have Canon Rebel 5t plus kit lenses. That's it.

[@jpdj2715]

The printed still image looks very good and the diverging trees are not a problem, visually, to me. (See my other comment.) As you used a 24mm here and mention both the perspective and a Tilt/shift lens, I feel you should consider the same shot with a 20mm lens but levelled precisely to mitigate the - geometrically perfect - perspective distortion and consequently "frame" the composition by cropping it to what we see here. Alternatively, if you have a lens with a horizontal angle (landscape orientation) that is equal to, or exceeds, the vertical angle (landscape orientation), you could have shot this as a vertical panorama and stitched the series in post. The latter has way more MP and may need focus stepping for each angle of view, plus Photoshop may need to make some perspective calculations, but the result will be brilliant. If you want to experiment with hi-res very large prints, then upsample the constituent (already focus stacked) frames in Topaz Gigapixel AI and you'll see how much detail loss we live with in Adobe Camera Raw. As to the Z 20mm/1.8 S - this is sharper than any 24mm in Nikon's Z/S class, and probably sharper than any other 20mm out there too.

[@mattbibbings]

No mature Beech in Northern England? North Yorkshire awaits you Nigel! Give me a nudge if you'd like some tip-offs 👍

[@JohnPaul-ii]

Nigel, your image at 11:32 which you later mentioned about needing to use your tilt shift lens on, can you not use the function in Lightroom to fix this issue?

[@NigelDanson]

You can but you then lose foreground

[@jpdj2715]

As I am at London-Amsterdam-Berlin latitude (for peeps in North America, that's farther to the North than both Vancouver and Quebec City in Canada), you, Nigel, are a bit more North than that. We will have similar light on a cloudy day, though. There are moments, here, when the light under a cloudy sky is "magical" to my eyes and I don't know when, why. I do not see it often, and do not see it in these images, but the completely diffused light would be both bright and diffused. My memory says that there is a total absence of shade on those moments (but human memory is fluid and creative ... compared to cuneiform recordings). Not sure if we need low clouds, high clouds, thin clouds, etc. Do you know what I mean? If yes, with all your outdoors experience, do you know what criteria need to be fulfilled for such light? Latitude? Cloud properties? Time of year? Time of Day?

[@jensbjorkkvist]

Do you have a special editing style when it comes to woodland? I find it very hard to edit this type of photos to make it look sharp but still keep a bit of the "fairy tail" feel (If that makes sence)

[@NigelDanson]

Yes - I explain this in my masterclass II

[@jensbjorkkvist]

@@NigelDanson Thx Nigel, will check it out !

[@michaeljenner1795]

Please let me know if the tilt and shift lens works with the FTZ adapter and the Z bodies. I really want to use this when shooting 2+ story buildings from the ground. There's very little room to back up without being in the street or on the opposite side. I'm concerned that the adapter will cut off or vignette the shift effect I need to straighten out the building. You mentioned having a T/S lens so you seem like a good person to ask. I've looked online and found no information to indicate one way or another. I don't want to buy a T/S lens without knowing ahead of time. Thank you!

[@larrysalaets7088]

Beautiful greens! Do you still shoot with your 24-70/2.8, or do you reach more for the 24-120/4? I have been contemplating making the switch myself but letting go of the 24-70 is proving to be as difficult as I knew that it would be.

[@NigelDanson]

Mainly the 24-120 now to be honest

[@stigfloberghagenphotography]

Thanks. Great tips. I was in a woodland in shade last week but I thought the photos looks to flat. When you shoot into the sun, do you overexpose?

[@NigelDanson]

No I bracket my exposures so I have all the dynamic range to work with

[@stigfloberghagenphotography]

@@NigelDanson Thanks. Have to try bracketing also in the woodland 👍

[@thomashilmersen711]

These photos are all nice, because you are in a nice place. The challenge in beautiful places is to make some kind of original art, instead of simply photographing something beautiful.

[@paulcomptonpdphotography]

Why don't you share yo8r locations with other like minded. Sometimes people just don't get the time to look when they are stuck at work t days a week. What a great location. Amazing would love to shoot stuff like this but like most I work t days a week and don't get the time to scout

[@NigelDanson]

I do share most locations publicly but not woodlands. Scouting is the fun part and well worth a hour or two on google maps!

[@rappy90]

Are all the images you show post edited in lightroom at all? Or were these just shot in jpeg and were done more so for the purpose of compositions?

[@NigelDanson]

Most had a bit of editing as all shot in RAW

[@leric4205]

😉👍