Photographing in a forest

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Photographing in a forest can be a difficult task. At least, if you want to capture the forest landscape. Often, you can no longer see the wood for the trees.

It is busy, chaotic, and there is no clear subject. Or you get things in the frame that you would rather not have there. I show how I often approach photographing in a forest.

It is and remains a difficult subject. A forest is busy, chaotic, and a photo can quickly become unattractive. Photographing a path in the forest is already much easier, because it leads the way through that chaos and therefore brings a lot of calm.

Sometimes there is no path to bring that calm. How should you approach it then? I saw a photogenic patch of forest in the German Eifel and wanted to photograph it. It consisted of a beautiful green patch of vegetation among the brown leaves.

But yes, those bare trees and the grey sky. They do not create the calm I would like to see. The green vegetation does form a curve through the photo, but it is not prominent enough.

Another problem is using a wide-angle lens (24mm), which makes everything look so small in the frame. Unrecognisable, in a way. One solution is to move closer to a subject.

I chose a fern among all the greenery to make it more prominent in the frame. That works, but the curve of the vegetation has now disappeared. In its place, I have a triangle shape, which contrasts with the triangular shape in the sky. They are opposites.

Still, the photo feels too empty to me. This is due to using a wide-angle lens, which, as we all know, makes the distances between trees appear greater.

In other words, it makes the photo too empty, which can be less attractive in a forest. I looked around carefully again and saw another fern a little further away. What if I zoom in on that?

By zooming in and choosing the green fern as a subtle foreground subject, the photo becomes much calmer. I used a 51mm focal length here, so I keep the triangular shape of the vegetation.

The triangle shape leads you into the photo. The dull grey sky has stayed out of the frame, creating a more intimate forest landscape. The longer focal length also makes the trees appear closer together. The forest becomes more forest-like, and the photo becomes calmer as a result.

These are small steps that can help you see through a forest and find compositions in it that strengthen the feeling of being in a forest without letting it become chaotic. A point of calm is important, such as the greenery in this example.

The most important thing is that you should not try to include as much as possible in the frame. A wide-angle lens only makes photographing a forest more difficult. By isolating things and choosing what you do and do not want in the frame, you can take fantastic photos in a forest.

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