I live in Tucson Arizona. My friends, family, and coworkers all know that I miss trees. Growing up in Texas I’m accustomed to live oaks and pine trees not Saguaros and Prickly Pear. I will, one day, move back to a place where trees grow easily and are abundant. What I’m trying to say is that the only problem with forests also exists in the desert: Photographing such chaotic scenes is difficult. When I went on this photo tour in Port Renfrew, BC Canada, all other attendees felt like I did – often defeated. In culling, I only identified about 10% of my forest photos as worth editing. This seems quite low but that number doesn’t include the ones I’d like to focus stack or combine in some way. I need to spend some time practicing that skill and determine what tool to use. For now, here are the simple photos from the forests around Port Renfrew.
The moss around Port Renfrew was remarkable. It was growing on most everything and walking on it was eerily quiet. I don’t know how fast that stuff grows but it felt like you could almost date events by how much moss covered objects. This branch, for example, fell on this tree but it clearly wasn’t a recent event. I like how the red in the wood contrasts with the green moss (as in pretty much all of my mossy photos) and how the ferns are poking out. The curve in the tree is nice since it contrasts with all the others as straight. Similarly the branch contrasts a bit because it’s at such a different angle. In thinking back, this tree didn’t have very much around it. I might have been interesting to show that it stood out from a wider angle.
This river was running through the forest. When I took this photo I thought the object on top of the branch was a rock. After zooming in at home, it turns out to be another chunk of wood. Still, I’m not sure how it got there and I’m curious how precariously it’s balanced. The movement in the water gives it a feeling that it’s quite precariously positioned. This was certainly taken with my 6-stop ND filter to give that effect.
It took me a while to figure out what to do with this photo. Black and white photos usually feel like a cop-out to me when nothing else works. If I intentionally did a black and white shoot, I might feel differently about those photos. The wind was strong on this morning and the moss in the tree was very pretty. I wanted to capture that somehow and this was the best way I was able to.
Here’s one I’m happy with. Seeing through the chaos in the forest wasn’t hard for me. What was hard was isolating the scenes that stood out and capturing them. I feel like I succeeded in this photo. This one vine curving and reaching up this tree stood out and I’m happy with the composition here (mostly). The color was hard in this photo. I like all the moss growing on the bark but it was difficult not to make it look ugly brown.
The chaos of forests got the better of me most of the time. This photo was a learning moment for me. One of the other attendees of the workshop told me that there was a nice shot of the three trees. He pointed to where I should stand and walked away. I probably stood there 5 minutes trying to see the composition. I took a few photos zooming in on the trees and wasn’t very happy with the composition. When I finally took this photo, I remember thinking ‘Ah, there it is’. I may have even said it out loud. The learning moment took place during our photo review when the other guy showed his photo of just the three trees; the same composition I took but didn’t like. I’m glad that I stood there long enough to finally find the composition that made this scene stand out to me.
We’ve got a big camping trip coming up but I’ve still got more Port Renfrew photos. I think I’ll do a post of the beach scenes (which may grow into two posts) and one for Fairy Lake. Both should be interesting.