Personally, I love forests, being surrounded by lots of green trees, sturdy trunks giving the sens of quiet strength, the sounds of the whispering breezes and the sometimes-noisy birds, all that fresh oxygen makes one almost giddy. But, for a photographer, there can be a downside.
If you’ve ever tried making landscape photos in a forest, you’ve no doubt found the lighting a challenge; bright in some spots, shadowy in others, all within the frame of your composition.
Do you expose for the bright areas and plan to reduce the shadows in post-processing, or take two photos, one exposed for the bright and one exposed for the shadows, and plan to stack them in post?
And if it’s sunrise or sunset, you have a limited amount of time to decide how to photograph your scene because the light changes quickly at those times of day.
Talk about a dilemma!
It’s good to have a technique in your toolbox so you are ready for the challenge when it arises. Here is landscape photographer Dave Morrow with advice on circular polarizer filter, white balance, and especially his ‘right-histogram’ or ‘expose to the right’ technique to keep from over-exposing the brighter areas without losing shadow details….that last is just very cool.
(Links to his website and workshops are in the video description on YouTube. I have followed Dave for a few years now and am on his mailing list. He has a lot of great, free photography PDF guides he shares.)
Dave Morrow with “3 Tips for BETTER FOREST PHOTOGRAPHY | Landscape Photography Tips”
Leave a Reply