How I get ready for Autumn Photography + Woodland Composition Tips

a big thanks to sennheiser for sponsoring this week's video [Music] morning everybody fantastic to see you all again so as you can see pebbles is back so i am out in my favorite woodland scouting for what is definitely one of my favorite times of the year and that is autumn and i just thought it'd be useful for to bring you along and explain some of the things i'm looking for maybe a month before the better colors are coming along and yeah some of these tips as well aren't just for woodland they're for vistas as well so if you're not into shooting woodlands then stick around because there's lots of tips for you as well and it is just a peaceful lovely morning it's quite overcast well there's no better place to be in the morning than a woodland like this is the pebs come on [Music] i found a scene here that pebbles is exploring and this is a beach tree i think it's a beach tree it is a beach tree which will look fantastic sort of late autumn so yeah i'm just thinking about this i'm just going to take a a video of where pebbles is do you like it in there pebbles is it good i think it's cooler when she runs around george gets really hot don't you hey you get really hot and you just want to cool down because you've got so furry so yeah so this is a a really lovely beach tree and it's got a really nice shape to it and this is a good example of something that if i came across in autumn i'd look at it look colorful but it's good to sort of look at this now where i i don't have to worry too much about getting a shot and i've i've seen already that there's a few issues so one of the issues is that these roots although they look nice i think this mud will just be very dominant in the scene i think that the canopy is really nice and the tree's really nice but from where i need to shoot which is probably there where you are now there's quite a lot of sky in the in the image and i think that'll make it difficult so it'll have to be quite foggy so i'll probably note down this is an interesting t just to maybe just check out as i'm going to another composition um but you know make be aware of that this foreground so i don't spend time messing about i can just have a quick look and then move on level screw up here [Music] so you can see that i'm right at the edge of the woodland now and one of the things that you probably don't realize in woodland photography is the position location of the sun is really really important so here if i just look at my compass you know i know that the sun pretty much rises in the east at this time of year i mean it does change quite a lot over october so it's worth checking photo pills but if i look at my compass now i can see the sunrise is predominantly going to be from over in that direction and obviously the sunset is going to be in that direction the woodland's all in that direction and then the other edge of it is obviously over there so i think it's really important to realize that this side of the woodland is probably best at sunrise and so if i find any trees down here they're probably not going to be as good to shoot at sunset so even if it's overcast foggy you're still going to get more light in this direction at sunrise than you are at sunset so yeah think about that think about the direction of the sunlight because it does make a really big difference and um that'll help you as well when you're in the woodland so if i go a little bit further in just thinking if i found a composition where's the sunrise going to be you know i don't want to shoot in direct light but that warmth is going to come from a certain direction and you need to know where that's going to be right pubs where are we going now let's go up here [Music] [Music] here okay i said i was going to just walk past this tree but it'd be rude not to take a photo so i've actually found a slightly different composition um so it was probably a good idea to stop um you can see if i just record in here yeah so you can see that i've usually do this in a landscape composition but i just thought actually there's not a lot of sky showing through up here and it's quite interesting the branches up here so i've put it in portrait composition and this fern just so the front looks really good as well so depending on what the fern condition is i think this potentially could look okay in autumn in this um composition so it was a good a good idea to come back and just walk past it again i mean i walked past this probably i've walked past it two or three hundred times and i've not seen this portrait composition which is just from a little bit further back so yeah i think it'll work i've still got this nice branch in here and yeah it's well worth doing right on to the next tip which we'll just walk down here a little bit and i'll talk to you a little bit more about that [Music] one of the most important things i think oh you're tired don't you pepsi so yeah one of the most important things i think in autumn is just understanding how things change over time so this is going to be different all over the world obviously we've got these amazing red berries of the rowan tree here and you know that coincides a little bit with the very start of autumn and then we go into the birch trees then their leaves start to change which i'm just above a virtually where my camera is now and i can see that they're just starting to change and then there's various of the trees going through to the end of october to the beech trees and then the oak trees and i think understanding that like understanding when the ferns might change they're going to change probably more in different parts of um the woodland as well and just noticing that over the seasons will just definitely improve your appreciation of woodland but also your ability to find compositions so think about that think about you know what is changing in your own woodland and maybe you can start to look at that now for this season that might help you next season but yeah the the ferns here are definitely just starting to change i think and these berries just look amazing where's pebbles gone right gotta get back up this hill now [Music] so i'm always looking for interesting characterful trees like this or old oak here and then the environment that that tree's set in and that environment's really important and you can see that there's some silver birch here we've got this old oak tree here and it's quite a nice background as well so i was originally when i was walking through the woods i've not been to this part of it because it's pretty huge this woods before and i was originally quite attracted to this and i thought actually this might work quite well um these you know ferns will change color but one of the problems is that i don't think it's got limbs low enough down so i'm going to have to get more of the sky in the picture and less of the lower part of the picture which i think is more interesting and then the other thing is that there's quite a lot of open ground around me here and that open ground is quite distracting i think as well so what i'm trying to do is find a a characterful tree something it doesn't have to be a character tree but that's what i'm going to look out for today that's surrounded and in an environment that is conducive to taking a good photo and i don't think this is quite there yet although it is pretty nice the silver birch are definitely changing their colour of their leaves already by the end of september um they're usually all gone the the the well they're not all gone it depends where you are but a lot of the silver birch leaves will have gone [Music] so it's probably worth noting as i walk through this sort of area here to avoid places that are really messy like this where there's a lot of debris on the floor you know there's lots of spindly branches like this and this one you know what you want to try and do is create some sort of order out of the chaos you want to keep a little bit of that chaos because that's what the woodland's about but you know there's this just doesn't quite work you know there's a lot of mess on the floor here there's lots of branches that sort of don't work together and then this big tree in the background is the attractive thing and it'll probably look good and colorful but i don't think all these other messy branches around it will work so it's trying to find as i said before a scene something that fits together it's not easy but that's half the fun come peps oh no pebbles oh pebbles got in the mud that's not good oh pebbles well as you can probably see i've not got a very muddy dog not a white one anymore in fact i don't know where she's gone she's gone off in disgrace but i wanted to talk about this tree i found this tree here which is an old wooden dead tree and you know there's some nice foliage around it this tree is quite nice as well and there's a nice background as well so i think it's a potential one to come back and just quickly look at in in the autumn i do feel though it's just a bit unconnected so i feel like this tree might just be just a really nice wooden tree in some of the trees rather than you know connected a little bit i feel like it'd be good to shoot it from this direction so i can see the because i'm end on to the to wood here i'd like to be able to see the light just on the um on the alt where the barks come off but in that direction the woodland's not great but i'll take a photo um and maybe want to come back too but i feel like i'm not quite the right direction i thought it'd be worth just explaining that i'll share the photo [Music] so i actually like it a lot more than i thought but i still feel like it's almost like a portrait of this tree and for that to work i think the lighting and the leaves around it just need to be perfect so wait to see what it looks like in autumn [Music] so this fantastic old tree here is the scene of one of my favorite shots actually which is called wise and it's a good time to show you this because it's a good example of when you're scouting you just need to open your mind a little bit so you can see there's a big blanket of fern here and that at the moment doesn't look great because it's all green but you change that into multiple colors and suddenly that big area becomes something a little bit more interesting and also there's an old tree there and when the ferns died down a little bit that tree becomes visible so it's just good to look out for things and think about how things may change i did spot this in the summer a few years ago so it's not like a scene that i found in autumn and then you know the background as well is quite a lot of different types of trees so again it's going to look really good in autumn because those colors are going to be very different and we're going to differentiate the different trees behind which at the moment are sort of a blanket of green um and i'll also in a bit of fog it's going to cover any sort of white bits in in the background so i really like this tree i like the twist in the trunk which is which is really nice which is why i was attracted to it in the first place right let's go and see if we can actually find a new shot [Music] so it's next day now and um well first of all i forgot my hat and i've also forgotten pebbles now i haven't forgotten her she's not here but i've come to a slightly different woods a little bit further away from where i live but one that i've come to a lot before a lot of the photos from this woodland are in the woodlands um and it is an amazing woods but i still feel like i've just touched the surface of it so i've come here to try and find something i didn't find anything in the the woods closer to me apart from that vertical composition which i think will work but i quite like this scene here and you can see at the moment the light is pretty spectacular this is a good example of a scene that's good at sunset so it's sunset at the moment the sun sets over there and that golden light is just going to get in here but sunrise will be over there it's not going to be a great sunrise location which is a shame not that it's not a sunrise location but it's a shame because i'd love to shoot this with some fog and i don't think you get that at sunset too often in in the uk anyway i'm gonna go and take this once the sun's out i'm ideally looking for just a little not strong sun just the sun as it's just coming through a cloud to try and sort of disperse it a little bit and create a more soft light but yeah this is beautiful just to tell you about the scene a little bit i've got this main tree here and then there's a few other trees really old silver birch there another silver birch over here and um yes what's not to like about this this is all about character and placement of the trees right let me get the shot before the sun goes because it looks pretty good at the moment [Music] so i've just come to the edge of the forest just to tell you a little bit about this week's sponsor and that is sennheiser you've probably noticed hopefully you've noticed that in my videos that sound is really important to me um whether it's the water lacking on a beach or you know the wind rustling through the trees or me just walking all those sounds are just so important and they make the video really and i have always used sennheiser microphones and when they reached out to me said do you want to sponsor a video then i jumped at the chance they've actually got a new microphone out at the moment which is a fantastic microphone if you just want to improve your sound quality so if you just want to go from just using your camera sound quality which can get interfered with by the wind and just never sounds as good to something just a little bit more professional this is the mke 400 and i've got to say i used it all the time in my last video i used it in iceland a huge amount and it made a really big difference so i'm vlogging this for the windiest spot i can find in iceland on top of a peninsula by the sea and as you can see it's windy i've got the mke 400 on top of my z62 and although there's a little bit of wind noise nothing's going to stop this compared with what it's like without it which is like this i also use this um lapel microphone quite a lot you see me walking around and i use that lapel microphone and i've also got sennheiser microphones for my studio as well when i do voiceovers so go and take a look at the mke 400 and thanks to sennheiser for sponsoring this week's video [Music] i love this time of evening when the sun's just sort of dropping down and it's a blue sky like this because you get a lot of really beautiful reflected light that's really nice and warm and you can see that here on the bark of this tree anyway i found a really nice but intimate um composition here and i'm not sure whether i'll even mark this to be honest because it it's not like it's not like a an engineered sort of composition i've put together it's more like i saw this tree it looked good i really like the tree coming out um to your left and these trees here and there's some nice background trees the thing i've got to really worry about is these ferns are moving around so much so i've upped the iso twice a 400 and um but i'm all i'm bothered about is getting the ferns and the tree sharp the background can drop out of focus a little bit this is good i don't think i was going to get any good shots tonight but i enjoy woodland photography is uh it's my favorite type of photography i just i just love it for relaxation it just relaxes me so much everyone else probably says it stresses them because they can't find anything but i can't find anything and something just pops right i better get this shot before the sun completely goes because i'm not taking it yet [Music] and this everybody is why you always need to look behind you because look at the scene i'm studying at the moment i completely missed this i was walking back to my car i just thought i'll just see what's behind me and i turned up on this amazing scene i love the graduation of lightness to darkness across the scene it looks really really good so i've taken a shot of this and that definitely will be my final shot and my final tip look behind you wow that worked [Music] you

Channel: Nigel Danson

Views: 52,238

Rating: 4.9881124 out of 5

Keywords: photography, woodland photography, photography tips, composition, photography composition, nigel danson, nigel Danson photography

Id: BzGOM8HKmAY

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021