Woodland Photography

I was inspired to go try some woodland type photography after work one day last week. The sky was overcast so I thought it might be nice to shoot in among the trees with the diffuse light from above. Central Texas is not known for its woody forests, but there are some forested areas along the trails at the wildlife refuge. So, I wandered the trails kind of slowly considering the trees around the creek.

Below is a photo from one of the trails as it passes under some live oaks. I was hoping all of the low greenery would really pop against the trail and the high tree branches.

And below is looking back the other way. I kind of like that log to the right.

I don’t really think these photos worked so well and I think it is because of the sky. The sky was gray, but it was a lot brighter than the foliage. It was hard to get it exposed properly and it really doesn’t work well with the leaves and branches. I fiddled around in Lightroom messing with shadows, saturation, color hue but I was never really happy with the images. I think I need complete canopy with no sky visible.

Woodland photography is not really my forte but I do see a lot of it online that I like. I find that the trees around here are kind of scrubby and messy and I don’t find them very appealing to photograph. Maybe that’s why I haven’t put much effort into it.

Below are some Ashe Junipers that the trail winds through. I have looked at this scene many times and I think it might photograph well in a good fog. Fog is not all that common around here so I may be in for a wait to make this happen.

This time of year there are some very bright green flowers that bloom all over the refuge. They are almost a glowing green and I tried to photograph them along the trail. The difficulty I find is in editing because right out of the camera they look like I have colored them in with a highlighter. They are just really a bright jello green and I think they are called milkweed. The photo below is one of my final photos of the day with one of the green flower groupings in the foreground and the sunsetting behind a pair of live oaks in the distance.

I focused on the foreground flowers and the distant trees are mostly out of focus. This makes for some odd colors through their branches I think. This image needed some focus stacking, but it was quite windy and I don’t think that the stacked images would have merged well anyway.

I worked up the highlights in the clouds and the contrast and saturation of the flowers. Believe it or not, the saturation is actually dialed back a bit, but those flowers seem to glow bright green. They are green like that in person too.

Those were the bests of my woodland attempts. There are many, many other photos that I will be sending to digital oblivion as they just didn’t work.

37 thoughts on “Woodland Photography”

  4. Ahh! A walk in the woods is always nice. I agree about fog enhancing the Juniper tree picture. Good idea. Hopefully you don’t have to wait too long. Love the colors of the sky n the last photo.
    The poor pictures that got sent into oblivion. 🙂

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    2. I did enjoy the walk and I needed something to write about. The forested areas closer to the coast or farther east in Texas are much more lush. Central Texas is arid tending towards planes and desert as you head west and the trees are a bit scrubby due to limited water.

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        2. There is a fault line called the Balcones Escarpment, or sometimes the Balcones Uplift, that runs right through central Texas basically along IH-35. West of this the land has uplifted granite and limestone and a lot of rocky soil which isn’t great for trees I suppose. It does give us the Hill Country of central Texas which can be pretty and this is where this wildlife refuge is in which I like to hike the ridges and canyons. There are a lot of places to the south and west of here in which the land is dotted with large pieces of protruding granite and little more than cactus and juniper can grow there.

          By the way, if I search “Balcones Uplift” I get bra ads, which is kind of funny. I wasn’t expecting that.

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            17. You just had to add those last 3 words …. but yes it was, with cream of course.
              Here is something you will agree with. The Bing picture is a good one today! 😉

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            21. Well that would be more doable.
              And I wouldn’t freeze. 🙂
              It may pain me to say this but I know it would be healthier if I liked black coffee. So don’t try the sweet coffee, you may get addicted. But….I would probably just give up coffee before drinking black coffee.

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