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

https://cderus.zenfolio.com/