Finding a Woodland Composition within a few MINUTES

Landscape photographers say, woodland photography would belong to the most difficult areas in landscape photography. But what is often forgotten here is, that woodland belongs to those places, that offers the higherst density for possible compositions. I limited myself to just 1.000 steps and tried to find a composition.

#1 Limitations make us creative

What a crazy idea, isn't it? Due to my knee injury I wasn't able to walk all too much and after a long shopping day in a big hardware store, the only possibility to get out a photograph was to limit the number of my steps.

On our way home from shopping, we had lunch in our van, straight at this enchanting woodland. While we were eating, we suddenly had the idea of doing a 1.000 steps challenge - in a one-cut-video, that's a video without cutting. My wife Barbara has never filmed before, she is not a photographer - so best requirements to give it a try ;)

#2 Floating with the environment

I didn't try to look cramped after a composition, I found a couple of rough compositions while walking, so there were some there. I just enjoyed the woodland. The most difficult thing here was always to talk and comment all thoughts, without making all too many breaks.

#3 Building up a composition

Finally I found an amazing spot - a tree with lush green foliage, catching the light in a fantastic way. But I didn't have time to breath, time to think about how to build up the composition. It was a one-cut-video, each decision had to be done quickly. I had big luck, that the composition was already there. I got attracted by the story itself - as a dead tree was laying in front of the glowing one.

But I totally underestimated the difficulty to talk with my audience, while I was finetuning the composition. Usually I would take around an hour for building up a composition like that, but this time I had just a few minutes. And I have to say, that I'm totally in love with this photograph.

A massive thanks to my wife for filming the video. She did definitely an amazing job!

Check out my gear, which I use for my landscape photography:

My Landscape Photography Gear

Nice greetings,

Christian