Working the FOREST I Try these TIPS

this week's video is sponsored by squarespace [Music] [Music] well good evening everybody hope everybody's doing well finally autumn is here and uh i've come to the right place for autumn color i've come down to kananaskis which is uh kind of it's south of banff national park in alberta and we've come just at the right time mid-september beautiful fall color i'm here with my partner karen we're here for a couple of days and then hopefully i'm meeting up with gavin i'm photographing right next to the road here got here a little bit late a lot of driving picking up passes and stuff so the sun has more or less gone behind the mountains here i was hoping to get some backlit foliage but i've just decided to stick with uh foliage that's kind of in the shade and uh it's still working pretty good the colors are nice and vibrant so what i'm photographing here uh the red foliage here is dogwood and then we have quite a few poplars in the air there's aspen and there's also cottonwoods i believe in this area it's a little hard to photograph because you'll get some areas where there might be a really good patch of aspen trees and then there'll be another area where they're kind of messy but what i'm doing here is i've decided to go with some panos so i took a pano to start off with right actually standing right on the road and now i've got in a little bit closer to this uh full foliage in here and i think i think it might work i'm doing um a really long pano so i'm just including the the bases of these aspen trees and then the the vibrant red color or in this case it's more of a it's kind of a pinky pinky color i'll show you what i have and then you guys can scrutinize the photograph but i think i think it's gonna work so in this case uh what i'm more or less going for is just color and you see we have this vibrant pink color in the in the bottom there it would have been nice if the the trees or the bowls of these trees were a little bit more evenly spaced out you'll notice that there aren't that many trees over here and there's a bit of a gap in here ideally for my whoops for my uses i would would have preferred it if you know all of these trees were kind of spaced out quite evenly but i think i think this might work out the one thing that i'm i am trying to do is is make sure that as many trees as possible are separated from one another and it's a little bit hard and what i mean by that is so they're not they're not overlapping with one another so that they kind of merge together because it just ends up being confusing especially when there's no light when it's flat like this but i think i don't know we'll see i think it'll work probably have to add a little bit of contrast to this since there isn't any light it's too bad i didn't get a bit earlier because there would have been some nice backlit uh backlighting on this foliage here and it would have just given it a bit more um three-dimensionality but anyway it's a it's a start [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] all right i'm i'm struggling a bit this morning i must admit it's it's absolutely beautiful um but uh do you think i can find a composition i think the problem is is that it's uh it's quite busy uh i mean the color is spectacular but it's trying to put the color with something and um there's some really great grasses in here and and fallen leaves and this wild strawberries that have kind of gone red and what i do like about this area is the grass is in between these shrubs they're quite frosted so it has a nice contrast between the colors but i'm not really high enough to to get the shrubs individually i could get the drone out but drones aren't allowed in parks so that's kind of out of the question i did spot these uh these aspen here and there's one that's sticking out a little bit further than the rest so it's a little bit brighter so uh i think i'm going to just start with this and hopefully that'll get the creative creativity going and then i can move on to something else i think this might work but it doesn't have the frosted grasses that i really like now i think there's a really good chance that uh i might end up taking a pano i don't know why i always end up taking panos with this camera but just like taking panels i guess [Music] so [Music] so as far as composition goes what i usually look for in forest photography or woodland photography is a shape or a tree that stands out to me above the rest now it can be very slight it doesn't have to be a drastic change in a pattern or whatever in this case all it is really is this this one tree kind of in the central portion here is out a little bit further than the rest of the trees and to my eye it looks slightly brighter and slightly wider so that's kind of the central subject of my composition then i compose around that tree now whether it'll work or not i don't know the one thing i have noticed though is that to the right of that tree there's another tree that stands out about the same distance and has about the same brightness and if i include that tree as well then i find that those two trees are competing with one another so it looks off balance to me so i've carefully composed it so that i'm just including the one central tree and not the uh the tree on the right the other thing that i'm i'm trying to be conscious of is while that is my essential subject or that's what i'm basing my composition around i really want it to be separate from all the rest so i'm making sure there's no trees behind it that are converging with it the other trees it doesn't matter too much i mean there's so many of them that you you're gonna get convergence with different trees uh anyway uh the one redeeming factor about it is that the trees that are in the foreground here are slightly brighter than the ones in the background because we're in a field here there's more light getting to the trees in the front if that makes sense it would be really nice if there was a little bit of light on these when the sun does come up over the mountain here they will be backlit but i suspect that by the time that happens the light will be too harsh so it probably won't work unless a few clouds come in and then just subdue the light just a little bit [Music] do [Music] all right after searching around for i don't know how long i think i might have found the composition it's it's bizarre it's just absolutely stunning but do you think i can find a composition it's a little busy and like i said before if you're down at the height we're at now the shrubs kind of blend in with one another so it's hard to define the shrubs and the trees and such also if you hear a lot of noise in the background there's a ton of traffic coming by down here i'm not really sure excuse me where everybody's going uh maybe it's because it's friday and everybody's coming in from calgary i know this is a popular place for people to come camping and hiking and such but no photographers here i can't believe it ah like i said though i think i found a composition i really love these golden grasses and when i first got here there was uh quite a bit of frost on the grasses but most of it is gone now the clouds moved in a little bit which is nice because it subdued the light but it's really bright and there is a bit of directional light coming from the top of the mountain there but what i've decided to do is i've decided to include everything i have these beautiful shrubs that are slightly backlit the golden grasses and then the aspen in the background the full color this year isn't as good as last year the foliage on the ground here is spectacular but the trees look very subdued and i suspect it's from the heat that we had over the summer and the lack of rain but uh nonetheless it still looks brilliant i'm going to start off with a pano 65 by 24 trying to include everything and then slowly narrow my view into something a little bit more defined [Music] do [Music] wow this is a lovely scene so the clouds are kind of dissipating which is a bit of a shame but uh there's still or the light is still subdued enough that uh we're getting some nice backlighting on some of these full leaves here in the foreground and of course the grasses as well so the contrast is getting a little bit high but it's still still manageable especially with the medium format camera and that's why this is one of the reasons why i got a gfx 100 was to deal with these scenes with a lot of contrast there's just more dynamic range in the files so right now i'm doing a pano or a 16x9 of all of these trees and what i've tried to do is just make sure that i've got them all well separated so they're not merging with one another and then of course we have the aspen in the background that you should be able to see but they're in shadows so they're not so bright that they're going to be distracting for the trees in the foreground here and there's a little bit of backlighting just touching the tops of those trees in the background i'm having to use my hand i'm getting a bit of lens flare in here and i've also put on a case uh polarizer just to get rid of some of the glare on the foliage uh the shrubs especially just to saturate the colors a little bit more [Music] do [Music] once again i'd like to thank squarespace for supporting my channel and sponsoring this week's video one of my favorite features of a squarespace website is the ability to quickly and efficiently update a gallery or page either from a desktop computer or while on the fly using the squarespace app from my mobile device loading multiple images onto a page is quick and offers the ability to change a design or page quickly and elegantly without any coding knowledge want to sell your products no problem setting up shop is also quick and intuitive sound interesting why not head over to squarespace.com and try it for free and if you like what you find use the code adam gibbs for 10 off your first purchase good morning everybody so i've come back to the location that i was at yesterday morning seems to be the best spot around other than perhaps hiking into the mountains it's almost like rush hour on on a monday i just can't believe it all of these people i couldn't figure out where they're going they're all coming from calgary and they're heading up to the trail heads uh up in peter lohee provincial park and i went up there with karen yesterday just to see what it was like i mean it's absolutely beautiful up there but the cars were it's just unbelievable there was hundreds of cars at the trailheads which is a little bit of a put off but it's understandable i mean people want somewhere to go and uh not many people are traveling right now so uh this is probably the the best place to come um well uh i mean there aren't any travel restrictions it's just a pain to travel for some people especially if you haven't been vaccinated i guess um so anyway i've come back to the place that i was rudely interrupted by yesterday by the light just suddenly got too harsh and i was just getting or just starting to get into it so i'm hoping that we might get a little bit of backlight again you can see behind me here uh there aren't any clouds whatsoever but to the east uh it's quite cloudy so uh when the sun does come up it'll probably take a while for the clouds to burn off and then i'm sure it'll be quite sunny for the rest of the day right i'm just going to head over to where i was yesterday and uh and see if i can find some more compositions okay so i've come back to the spot that i was at yesterday i felt a little bit rushed at the end there with the light it changed so quickly and i managed to pull off a couple of shots but i wanted to explore this composition a little bit more and perhaps find some other comps in the same area as you can see the light is quite subdued now because we still have the clouds in here so what i've done here is i've try to separate each of these trees individually which is quite easy to do because they're quite well spaced and then have the uh the aspen in the background as a as a somewhat of a line in the background they're kind of secondary to these trees in the foreground and i absolutely love the grasses in the foreground and then of course we have the the autumn color in the mid ground there too so all together they work really well now it is a little bit windier today so i am having a problem with shutter speed because it's still quite dark as well yesterday i took an image just over here which is only a few feet but the the the trees looked a bit more well spaced and for this composition even though they're spaced away from one another the composition is a little bit tighter and i'm not really sure which one works the best um so i'll show you the composition that i have now and then i'll show you the composition that i took yesterday and we'll kind of have a bit of a comparison and some of the perhaps the negatives and the positives of each of them if if there are any so this is the composition that i have right now and you can see that each of the trees this one this one this one and so on i've composed it so that they're spaced from one another and they're not overlapping except for some of the branches and such in here and i quite like this fall color up in here i've purposely cut off the bottoms of the trees here except for this one and this one and the back one i don't think we need to include the bottoms of them but i will take some compositions with the bottoms now then if i move my camera over to where i was yesterday which is right here i believe and we just adjust our camera here you can see that the the trees are still well separated uh but they have a little bit more um space in between them i think i had something like that now including the bases of them and actually i think i did take a shot something like that yesterday i quite like that uh configuration as well and that actually might be my favorite because we're including all of these aspen in the background i love the line of aspen and then we have the full color the aspen actually uh give context to the the location and then we have these beautiful grasses in the foreground here as well and i might even be able to go wider now this is 16x9 and this is a format that i would probably use for for this composition so something like that so it's it's a good idea to just play around with each uh you know if you find something that you really like a subject or a group of trees in this case it's not a bad idea to try lots of different compositions rather than just settling on one and then just moving on to something else and i often do this i'll find something that i really like and i'll just stay with it until i find a composition that i think works the best and of course when the when the light is fleeting um if you have a bit of an idea of what it is you want like i think in this case this is probably my favorite composition out of all of them i would probably just stick with this and just take a number of different images of this comp [Music] shiny [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so we are getting a little bit of directional light now so that's really elevating uh some of those leaves and and bringing them forward the biggest issue we have right now though is wind it's quite windy out so i've had to jack up my iso to 800 i guess what i could do if i wanted to is i could probably use a shallower depth of field and just stack the images like maybe do three or four different images at say i don't know f 5.6 or f 8 and then combine them later on in photoshop but i'd rather just do it all in one shot so i'm shooting f16 iso 800 and even with that my shutter speed is still pretty slow it's 1 25th of a second which i don't think is fast enough to capture the movement of these leaves so i might have to i might have to focus stack if i want everything sharp that is sometimes a bit of movement doesn't bother me that much it's not the end of the world okay um but one more composition that i'm going to attempt in this little area here before i go back to the van and and have a nice cup of tea now this is quite a bit more complicated and it might not work because it might be too much going on in it but i use the same principles as all of my other forest photography compositions in that i try to keep those trees separated from one another so they're not merging and even though this is a really complicated uh scene i think i've managed to for the most part separate most of these trees the light right now is is really quite beautiful it's uh it's subdued but there is sun trying to come through so what i've done here is this is more about trying to keep those trees separated from one another and you can see that we have this tree here these two these two it'd be pretty hard to separate now this one is a bit problematic this one in here see how it's touching this this one here and then we have these are pretty much separated there's a bit of a clump here separated separated separated so it's working pretty good now if i move the camera over just a little bit to there you can see that these are separated now but this is even more of a clump so there are going to be compromises and of course let's trees like this one you can either include it all or try to move your camera over so that you're hiding it behind another one but then of course you you might create some other issues at the same time so those are the things that i i really look for when i'm taking images of forest because as i've said a number of time times you're trying to make something that's just one-dimensional look three-dimensional and the only way you can do that is with light and if the light isn't working in your favor then you really have to define what the subject is and and try and separate it from other objects so there's not this big confusion about well what is it that you're looking at now that's that's not to say that every composition has to be like that but that's more or less what i look for it's it's trying to find some kind of order out of what is otherwise chaos [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] right everybody i hope you enjoyed this video i hope you got some information out of it that might be helpful to you i do tend to repeat myself over and over again photography is one of those things that there is only so much you can talk about when it comes to composition and camera gear and the workings of a camera the best advice i can give anybody to improve your photography is just to get out there and start making images learn from other people learn from your mistakes learn from your successes and that's the only way you're really going to improve all right every thanks ever so much for watching again this week i hope you enjoyed it please be sure to give me the old thumbs up and as always if you enjoy the content of this channel be sure to hit that subscribe button alright bye for now [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Adam Gibbs

Views: 33,699

Keywords: kananaskis alberta, kananaskis, adam gibbs, adam gibbs photography, landscape photography tips, landscape photography, photography, quiet light, landscape photography in the canadian rockies, photographing fall colour, photographing autumn colour, photography autumn color, photographing autumn color in the canadian rockies, van camping in the canadian rockies, photographing aspen trees

Id: oxyLwBHwUZU

Length: 30min 14sec (1814 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 10 2021