A Deer Photography Journey: Episode 2

Photographing at this time of the year in a woodland can be really overwhelming. We're hit with all of that autumnal color, textures, light, and it can be really difficult coming away with some real minimalist images when we're surrounded by perhaps all of this chaos. Now I'm in a stunning silver birch woodland today looking for some real minimal photography to take away. So morning everyone, welcome back to the vlog. Let's go see if we can find some beautiful images amongst some of this chaos. So what are we talking about when we use the term minimalist photography? Well, what we're doing is we're reducing the elements that are in our images to sort of create calm and focus. We want to draw people into our images. Now one of the ways of doing that is by using a telephoto lens so that we can really zoom in into our image and reduce everything that's around. Now I've just come up here quickly because we've got some mist that's just coming in now with a side directional light coming through the woods. What I've done is I've put on my 70-200mm lens and I've zoomed in on four main sort of characters of this image, four birches that are sat in amongst some of that bracken that has turned now and the soft light is just coming through and capturing those leaves. So let me just show you what I'm looking at on the back of the camera. Now you can see that I've positioned these four main trunks on my left hand side, but I've left some space on the right and hopefully that's going to help draw the viewer's eye into the image. The problem is if we just fill our image with our subject, there's nowhere for the eye to go, but by leaving space around our key subject, it really helps the eye to sort of follow through and look beyond our image into the distance. It's kind of like leaving space for somebody's eye to be drawn through. So you can see that I've got these four main trees on my left hand side. We've got this beautiful colour now that's being hit by the light and there's that beautiful mist just coming through which is really softening down that light and then I've left this space right hand side so that the eye can be drawn through, just taking us through the image. So anyway, let me just get this shot while we've still got a little bit of mist coming in from the right there and here's the first image. Now, photographing in a silver birch forest like this really lends itself to minimalist compositions. You've got these clean lines, these consistent tones in our colours and that real soft colour that really helps give you some beautiful compositions. So what I'm trying to do here is photograph these young silver birches, mainly their trunks just to get a nice repetitive pattern in my composition. But unfortunately, there just aren't quite enough for me to be able to achieve it. You know, so there's a lot of sort of very small young sort of shoots coming up through but actually as far as main trunks go, I love the way that the whites of the bark, the silver bark is really standing out against that dark background but I just don't quite have enough to get a nice repetitive pattern of trunks. I'm moving around a little bit to separate them up so that I'm not overlapping and I'm trying to include a little bit of that sort of yellow in the leaves that are the yellow and the golds in the leaves above just to give it that splash of colour but I don't think that I'm going to be able to achieve it. There's just not quite enough to give me a nice row of trees sort of off set off along into the background there which is a shame because I think it would have, if I had just had a few more, it would have been a beautiful image. I'm not going to give up, I'm just going to keep sort of moving around. It's funny, you were just saying that I'm absolutely surrounded by beautiful trees and you see them off in the distance but then actually when you get close, you kind of lose that composition and it's like now I'm looking back where we came from and the trees look absolutely beautiful so it's a little bit deceiving. You think you're surrounded by these incredible images but when you get up close you kind of lose it, it blends in a little bit but that's just, it just means you've got to work the area that little bit harder. Absolutely stunning though, absolutely stunning. Okay, so if you're wondering why it's a little bit darker, this is morning two. We lost that beautiful soft light yesterday, it got quite harsh and it really sort of changed the feel of the woodland and we've soon realised that we needed to get that early morning light back. So day two, back in the same place, slightly further along, we got right up into the hills yesterday but the thing is once you get right into the forest you lose some of those compositions and definitely some of these trees certainly turn, the ones that are sort of closer to open spaces turn much quicker than the ones deeper in the woods. So anyway, so day two, really looking forward to getting back in here and there's a little bit of that familiarity because we've been here before so that's really nice and I'm looking forward now to sort of waiting for a little bit more light and finding some more compositions. It's funny, Corinne and I have been having a conversation backwards and forwards with regards to whether this can really be referred to as minimalist photography and I totally understand what she means. We tend to sort of think of minimalist photography as that sort of lone object in the middle of nothing but just sort of vast space but I don't know, I mean rightly or wrongly but I tend to think of sort of minimalist photography when you have a large scene in front of you like a forest or a woodland, whatever it is and you're reducing that down to a very small number of elements and surrounding that by sort of lots of visual space. Now when we're in an environment like this, you know, visual spaces, I'm using the sort of the leaves and the colour of the background and in this instance I'm focusing in on these two trees with their beautiful dark branches and they're making up a very small element of this photograph. I've got them positioned over to the left and perhaps the main sort of area of this image is all of that colour in those leaves. So we've taken this whole scene in front of us, we've got all of these trees, we're surrounded by them but we're just honing in on this very, very small area and eliminating everything else. Now I'd be really interested, let me know in your comments below, when you think of minimalist photography, do you tend to think of those sort of big vast open spaces, maybe a house on a hill with nothing around or a lone tree in the middle of a lake? Let me know, I'll be interested. So let me show you what I'm looking at on the back of the camera, I've kind of honed in on these two trees just in front of me here, what I really like about them is those dark trunks and those dark branches in amongst those soft golden leaves. Now I'm on my long lens, I'm on my 70-200mm lens so I'm able to sort of zoom quite tight and I'm getting rid of all of the sort of trees that were around there and I'm using a sort of fairly shallow depth of field, hopefully around about sort of f5, f6 so that I really soften out the background around. Now the light's not great, I mean it's incredibly overcast but that is giving me a nice sort of soft even contrast to the image. Now what I've done is I've positioned my trees right over to my left hand side, almost sort of like a third of the way in and I'm using all of that network of branches to sort of fill my right hand side but that's really just a wash of colour and yeah I think it's going to work out quite well, there's a tiny little bit of breeze and obviously I'm needing a fairly long exposure because it's quite dark in there but I don't mind that, again it softens the image a little bit which is really nice and we've eliminated everything else around us and we're just honing in on those two sort of main trunks with the branches coming off and the leaves. So anyway, I'll get this shot, here it is. Now there is definitely nothing minimalistic about this image so I think I'm just getting swallowed up now by so many photo opportunities and this silver birch back here has really caught my eye, it's such a character. I love the way that the sort of branch slopes down here almost following the line of the hill and it really does look like it's defying everything against it and still reaching for the sky, it looks like it's been perhaps knocked and it's real sort of struggle but it's still hanging on in there amongst all of the other silver birches, you've got these branches which are sort of almost like secondary trunks coming up here off the main trunk and it really does sort of stand out in amongst the other trees around it that are just heading straight for the sky. So what I'm doing, I'm still shooting on my 70-200mm lens, I'm using a very shallow depth of field, I'm shooting at around about f5 really to sort of soften that background behind it but I do like those trees that are really sort of giving nice dark shapes in the background and then we've got this patch of light, I don't know if you can see that but it's just behind the main trunk where there's an opening in the trees and a big gap behind which is really giving it some extra light right in the middle there. I'm going to be cropping this, in video format we also get this sort of tree on the right hand side but I'm sort of zoomed in a little bit more removing that and just honing in on that tree but what a character, just looks like it's really sort of defying all odds and yeah, here's the image. So I've come back up to the area that I was trying to photograph yesterday for us but earlier for you and this was these young silver birches and I was trying to get some nice lines of trunks through here but I was a lot further down and I've actually come up and found a really nice sort of view through here, just cutting through the bracken. So what I'll do is I'll show you what I'm looking at on the back of the camera. So hopefully you can see on the back of the camera, you can see how we've got these beautiful silver birch trunks just sort of lined against that dark background but then introducing this sort of speckle of colour with the leaves up and around the top and it really does make a nice composition, we've got these nice straight lines coming through with just that splash of colour and I think maybe even slightly cropping it a little bit further might be nice but I think I'll take a couple of shots and just see again I'm on my 70-200mm lens zoomed right in and I'm not worried about cutting off some of these trunks because I just want these nice straight lines coming through here giving a nice repetition but also adding that splash of autumnal colour through there. I think that'll make a beautiful image so let's get that shot, here it is. So I think that's it for this episode of the vlog, I'm really looking forward now just getting in amongst some of that woodland with the camera and just losing myself in amongst some of the woodland. So minimalist photography, can I get away with that or is it minimalist photography in a forest and woodland? I don't know, let me know in the comments below, maybe theming this episode of the vlog wasn't such a good idea but wow what an absolute stunning location. Now it's funny because we came out searching for a woodland that had some sort of hints of silver birch and we just came across this beautiful silver birch woodland forest and it really is incredible, you cannot beat Perthshire at this time of the year for autumn colours, it's stunning. So anyway I do hope you've enjoyed this episode, thank you so much for watching, if you haven't already don't forget to subscribe, hit that bell notification, don't forget to check out our ebook, 15 Breathtaking Locations Around Scotland with tips on gear to take and links through to the vlog and I think that's it. Thank you so much for watching, look forward to seeing you in the next episode.