From a photography perspective woodland, including forests, are chaotic, hard to photograph places. The techniques required are common to photography generally, especially Landscape, but I believe observation especially important as it’s foundational to identifying compositions in messy woodland environments.

Autumn in Savages Wood appeared to peak during the third-week of October this year and pretty much to schedule - perhaps a week early or two at the most. As it turned out, the duration of Autumn was quite short but, to my eye anyway, the colours seemed more intense that we’ve seen for a while.

The Three Brooks Nature Reserve is the gem of Bradley Stoke. At 110 acres (roughly 62 football pitches) it provides a biologically diverse, green space for the community.

Last year I started to explore ‘The Forest’ as it’s known to locals. This summer I spent lots of time exploring a handful of areas with a mind for Autumn woodland photography. This really helped identify those places that didn’t have potential meaning I could focus on selected areas during the Autumn period.

On the Western edge of the Cotswolds is the village of Cranham. Hidden away under the trees in this traditionally sheep farming area are decades-old drystone walls which are now gracefully decaying.

To the East of Wickwar are several small woods. Nestled within the young, straight trees are curvey trees. These contrast wonderfully against their straight neighbours.

Battery Point at Portishead is one of those places I've known about for years but never actually photographed as its so close to home. Partly due to Covid travel restrictions I made it a bit of a mission recently.…

This was one of the early outings this year with the new Fujifilm GFX100S. Using greater than ISO 400 on my previous landscape camera would have resulted in significant noise, however, the GFX100S is a monster. The above photograph was made at ISO 1250 and has little noise. Its Dynamic range is also significantly wider making this high contrast image possible with a single exposure.

In an age where image manipulation is so prevalent the statement 'A photograph never lies' has, unfortunetly, lost its meaning. But whilst this photograph is pretty much how it was, I can tell you that those nice warm colours lie!

I could imagine them silently multiplying until they had consumed the ice like tiny preditors…

The ground was much more alive with small red/purple flowers than it had been on my previous visit but the fog muted all colour and everything looked very flat in colour images. With the muted colours, shapes became the dominant feature and the just visible outline of the old chimney and ruined power house seemed to scream Cornwall!

I’m not sure whether the sign was genuinely for some past event that I’d missed or whether some bright spark had spotted the scene and erected the sign. But whichever it made me giggle. :-)

Avoiding the temptation of arboretums, I made a concerted effort this year to explore somewhere not far away, somewhere I really should know much, much better. The Forest of Dean is about 15 miles away and sits between Chepstow and Ross-on-Wye on the Western side of the river Severn. This year I started by thinking carefully about why previous trips hadn't worked and what I could do better.

On one morning during my stay at Bridge of Orchy in Scotland I awoke to find everything covered in soft, white fluffy snow. It was a sight to behold. There was only the occasional muffled sound of a car on the normally busy A82 due to the still lightly falling snow. With little to no wind the trees were laden with perhaps 2 - 3 inches of snow and their branches bent over under the weight. It was definitely a photography day!

Shortly after arriving at Bridge of Orchy a day started with the hills obscured behind thick grey clouds, there was a biting cold wind and snow was falling at road level. It looked unpleasent outside the hotel windows! Inside the hotel, dry and warm, I reasoned that if the weather broke there would be some good photography so, suitably booted and dressed for a day on the Scottish hills in winter I headed out and up one of the hills overlooking Loch Tulla. Not that you could see the loch or much else! Fortunetly, I had scouted the lower paths the previous day and was confident the higher path would be ok.

Christmas Day 2019 and the weather finally turned nice for a while. The wind dropped and the cloud and sea spray disappeared - it was a joy to be out at first light with the camera. :-)

Leaving the truck in the little car park behind the tea shop the sky was still dark but with a few stars twinkling overhead I knew it was at least partly clear. So, with a growing sense of anticipation I stumbled up the narrow track to the top of the cliffs.

Christmas day 2019 was the best day of the entire Christmas week in Cornwall. The strong, gusty winds had stopped and there was a bright, diffuse light thanks to some thin cloud. The day had started early with a successful trip to Porthgwarra for sunrise - more on that in a later post - followed by a lazy hotel breakfast and planning for the rest of the day. Given the bright, diffuse lighting I thought Sennen beach would be good for some intimate landscapes.

Porthgwarra has a great little shop which does amazing tea and cake in the summer but, sadly, it's closed over the winter months. Quite understandable as Cornwall is beautifully quiet in mid-winter with none of the maddening tourists!