Photographing The Old Growth Trees In New Zealand

Well the snow kept on coming overnight and I needed some trees to work with so I've come into the national park. Look at what we're working with today. I've been out a couple of hours already this morning and it was a bit tough at first, lots of low cloud, no mountains. Now the cloud's burned off, the light's coming in, it's incredible but there's a bit of urgency because as that light's coming in all the snow is starting to melt and these beech trees do not hold the snow for too long because the leaves are so small it is overwhelming when you get these conditions it is just so stunning but it's also very very challenging we're just going to go for a slow steady walk up this way just watch look and observe it can be really hard to control your emotions when you're experiencing such amazing moments and moments that you know are rare and fleeting it's it's really hard you it's good to be excited and have fun but if you get too overwhelmed and too worked up you're just going to miss the moment so whenever I feel that heart rate coming up and maybe I'm feeling like oh where's the shot you know and feeling a bit of pressure just try to take a big breath slow down you just got to be present in the moment I'm just trying to get into the shade and that will make it easier to draw the eye to a specific point look at all these young trees here which have been bent over by the weight of the snow they just looks so awesome really nice little scene here guys looking at the these two trees gentle side light and just enough even snow coverage that's one thing i'm always keeping in mind is if you're gonna have snow you don't just want it in one patch of the image it just becomes distracting then clearly defined subjects with a little bit of framing just enough there to fix the eye on and that light the light is just everything unbelievable man you wait all year for these little moments you might get two a year if you're lucky so it's so nice to get out here and just enjoy these conditions while they last. Well as usual the the hard part with the snow once it starts melting especially it just gets wet and I'm getting destroyed here guys. Camera everything fingers are frozen. This looks interesting look at that wow holy moly there's got to be a shot in there. The challenge now is the light's getting a little strong in this particular section some of the best snow is on the outside of the forest but that's where the light's hitting the trees and too much light is not good when it comes to photographing the woodlands. We're going to walk further into the forest to get into the shade and then we'll try use a bit of a back side light to get that nice glow on the moss. Some of you might have my masterclass on forest and woodland photography which I recently released and one of the things that I talk about in that is finding that harmony amongst the chaos one of the best ways to do that is to slow yourself down significantly and your eye will slowly tune into the different shapes which are being presented within the forest and that's why I've stopped here at the moment not only do we have this beautiful backlight balance is just something I'm always looking for balance in the frame to bring the eye through the image into the frame not out of the frame one of the things you just really have to watch out for on these wet days you know we've got the falling snow now which is basically acting as rain but you just got to keep cleaning that lens here's another wonderful example of finding that harmony amongst the chaos look how distinct that beech tree is right there and not a bad little section of foreground it's quite clean through this area the backlight though that is one of the key factors as well which makes it just stand out so wonderfully that very soft back side light which illuminates and really showcases the shape of the tree the uh a mid-range lens is so good in the forest it's it's a really good all-rounder i use all the lenses with trees but i find i'm often drawn to that 24 to 35 mil range on the far left now you can see there's a big tree in the back i think that competes with our main subject so if i was going to frame this i would probably just go for more of this centralized framing and i love either side of this one those twisted smaller trees in the background don't really balance them out and frame them up just right. It's very rare for me to shoot vertically in the forest because often getting all that white open canopy up there is obviously highly distracting so I'm often going for more of a horizontal frame angling down slightly. In this specific case though I think the vertical about there works quite well because of this smaller tree just here in the foreground it's counterbalancing the big guy in the background and just making the scene have a bit more depth to it i could get it in horizontal but i just think we don't get enough of the tree then so going vertical just about here i think that works quite well just because of the way that foreground tree is also getting the light and it counterbalances some of these twisted trees in that back right end so you've got lower left center back right i like the horizontal too so i'm doing both and and I suggest you do that yourself in the field, is always give some variation to your compositions. You just never know when you get home and you've got those fresh eyes, how you might see the composition differently once you're home and out of the environment. So definitely more frames than not enough frames.