Ode To Enchanted Light
Under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches,
shining
on every leaf,
drifting down like clean
white sand.
A cicada sends
its sawing song
high into the empty air.
The world is
a glass overflowing
with water.
Pablo Neruda
The Shot
It’s fairly easy to capture the beauty of a forest in a video. The three-dimensional nature of your surroundings is readily apparent. Captivating shapes, lighting, and colors appear and disappear as you walk through the scene.
Photographing the forest is much more difficult. Without movement, you’re in a much less interesting two-dimensional world.
And the forest is filled with visual clutter. What are you supposed to look at? How do you find your way through the image?
The best advice I received regarding forest photography is to find the darkest part of the forest and to shoot into the light.
If you combine dark to light, big to small, and cool (blue tint) to warm (red tint) transitions, a forest can come alive in a photograph. But it’s difficult.
I spent over an hour wandering a random patch of woods near Munising, Michigan hoping to find that combination. This is as close as I could come.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus