The Woodland Photography Habit I Needed to Break

This video starts with a roll of tape and is kindly sponsored by MPB. Before any of you panic because it does look like I'm trying to fix a camera here, I'm not. I'm actually creating very specific guidelines for a panoramic format. This leaves me with a viewing area that is roughly the same proportions as a 65 by 24 frame, which essentially is often associated as the XPan crop, but essentially it's just a very incredibly wide panoramic crop. I absolutely fell in love with this aspect ratio last year, but I struggled to find scenes and subjects that I thought worked with it, and at the time I was using the Hasselblad X2D with the XPan crop, and although I still own the camera, I don't currently have it on my person, somebody is borrowing it from me, but I actually don't plan on keeping it, to be honest. So instead of making this about the camera, I figured that I would use this as an opportunity to train myself my creative ability to see in these more unique crops and aspect ratios using more of my go-to camera equipment. I've come to a tree that I have yet to photograph, despite having scouted it quite a long time ago. I've not really figured out how I want to photograph it. I just love how the roots are embedded into this rock. We have this amazing tree in the background as well. That's me. If I were going to take a wide landscape scene here, I'm naturally going to get a lot of the sky in the background in frame, and therefore that sky has to be somewhat interesting for the tree to lead your eye into this big negative space. And I've yet to have an interesting sky, and that'll probably take a few rounds of coming back before I manage to achieve that and get lucky with conditions, I guess. But for now, I think trying out the panoramic crop... That's like the fifth time I've done that. Panoramic crop. Panoramic crop. A panoramic crop. Crap. For god's sake, if I say crap in this video, I mean crop. Crap is crop, okay? Yes. A panoramic crop. It doesn't suit this scene. Just move on, Corny. Do you know what may work though? This scene right here. It's got this tree in it still. I'm just positioned way further back. So we've got many trees in this scene, and the one that I was just looking at is in the far back, and if I expose for the background, the sky, the landscape, all the way off in the distance, the rest of the trees become silhouetted. I've also got this path that goes from the bottom right through the scene there, and these trees, I love the curve of these trees, absolutely fantastic. I'm not 100% convinced about the sky poking in at the top, so I'm going to try a couple of different images, just moving the camera very slightly, sort of up, down, and zooming in, to see if I can reduce that slightly. But this will be an interesting image to review in post-processing. I kind of like it, but I'm not 100% sure, but this is what this experiment is about, is just to build confidence in this kind of aspect ratio. I'm sure some of you are wondering, Courtney, why are you doing it like this? Why not just stitch a few photos together, like most people do when they do panoramic images, and yeah, that's, you know, that's one way to do it, but I'm just using this way as a tool, a practice tool essentially, because I don't tend to see and notice these panoramic scenes often when I'm out in the woods. It's not really an aspect ratio that I go to very often at all, so I just want to practice noticing them more. I also just don't like the uncertainty of imagining a crop in my head, only to get home later on and realise that it just didn't work. I like to get as close to the finished result as much as possible on my camera screen, in camera before I've even taken the photo. I like to stand here and visualise how I may edit the photo, so I know exactly what it is that I'm getting. So this intentional process changes the way I compose, it changes where I may stand, it changes the focal length, the lens I may use, what I choose to include and exclude from the photo, and for me this creative process is different, composing for the crop rather than just taking an image and maybe trying to figure it out later. I love this fern, such a colour contrast against this cut log. I wasn't originally going to go for intimate scenes in this video, I'm going to try and stick to wider landscape scenes, but I spotted this and I can't leave it. These logs will all be gone within a few weeks, so this is a very unique moment. We are currently in the middle of a heat wave and so I've been going out early morning and in the evenings where the light is a bit cooler. So I'm going to head off and then come back in a few hours time. So while I'm out scouting for our next scene, I just want to thank MPB for sponsoring today's video. If you have any camera equipment you no longer need, it's just collecting dust, you can turn that into cash with MPB, the largest online platform for buying, selling and trading in used video and photo kits. Whether it's a camera body, a lens, a drone, accessories or in my case some video kits and microphones I no longer need, selling to MPB is super easy, hassle free and simple. So let's do it. All you need to do is tell MPB what it is that you're selling, select the condition of the item and you're going to receive an instant quote. Once you're happy with it, choose your preferred shipping option and then send your gear off. Once it arrives, MPB's experts will then inspect it, they will adjust your quote if necessary and then you'll be paid within a few days. It's a really easy way to give your gear a second life and put some money back into your pocket or towards the next bit of kit that you need. And by passing on your unused equipment, it keeps high quality gear in use and it reduces waste. So if you've got camera equipment just lying around, give MPB a try. I'll leave the MPB for sponsoring today's video. I headed to Wentworth to photograph an image I had in mind, a winding stream flanked by trees. But the recent lack of rain meant it wouldn't work as the water levels were extremely low. So instead I'm trying this format out in an image that I have already taken here once before. It was a moodier, wintry image where this stream was flowing a little more abundantly. Because we don't have that flow of water sort of filling in the bottom of the scene here and we don't really have much going in the top, this crop then just cuts all of that unnecessary space out and just squeezes your focus, I guess, into this strip here with this tunnel. And to me it looks as though the tunnel has sort of dragged these rocks out, but they've all become stuck and piled up by this tree. What I like about this is there is no single element that's carrying the whole photograph. The stream, bridge and trees all feel like they're working together. This is where I noticed something I'd slowly drifted away from in my woodland photography and it reminded me of another location I hadn't photographed in quite some time, and certainly not in this aspect ratio. What I love about this framing is that it exaggerates the rhythm of the trees, especially as you sort of take away the top and bottom and it really squeezes you down this pathway. And instead of it becoming about individual tree trunks, it's just a journey down this pathway and into this bit of woodland. I absolutely love it. Both of these elements, the pathway and the trees, all go hand in hand, just works beautifully. Ah, the sun's coming through on the top right, I might actually be able to get a sun star in there as well, which would be really cool. Over the last year or so I've become quite hooked on finding individual subjects or characters in the woodland. I went on a bit of a mission to find ancient characterful trees and some of my favourite photographs have come from doing exactly that. I think without realising it I have come to expect the tree or a subject like that to be the entire focus, and I think this is why I've been struggling with my wider woodland photography for a little while, because instead of asking, okay how does this tree fit into the landscape, what relationship does it have with other subjects, instead I'm asking, okay is this one tree good enough? When I look back at some of my woodland photos I usually enjoy scenes that have relationships between subjects in some way, and the trees are not always the final destination. I want to go back to doing that style of woodland photography, and not just that style, there's more than one way to photograph woodlands, but I think working in this aspect ratio has sort of naturally pushed me towards it, which is quite interesting, so good choice Courtney, good choice. I was just playing around with this scene here on the edge of this pond, and I had the most gorgeous golden light coming through the trees as I was taking test shots and trying to finesse the composition and get it right, and then all of a sudden my camera just started flashing error modes, error codes, and it's taken me about five minutes to clear it, I don't know what was wrong with it, it just decided it was going to revolt against me for a good five minutes, and typically now the light has gone. So hopefully one of those test shots was kind of decent enough, and maybe I can come back sometime to try again. The sun is trying to poke through again, it's just not reaching where it was earlier. I am too tall for the swing, which is funny because I'm actually quite short. Anyway, I'm taking this as my time to stop, seeing as my camera had a bit of a blip, sort of maybe it's telling me, okay that's enough Courtney, you can go home now. Yes, so did this exercise work? Originally I wanted to say no, because I think to begin with I really was struggling with the wider scenes. Now intimate landscapes can very very easily work with this aspect ratio I feel, but the wider scene, it's taken a while to get into the rhythm of it, and typically now as I'm ready to leave and the light has gone, I'm noticing more and more potential opportunities. So yes, I'm gonna say yes, I think this was a worthwhile exercise that perhaps can continue in a future video, or even just off camera for myself. Anyway, thank you so much for watching this video, and I'll see you next time. Coming up next time, I tackle impossibly small subjects in a high magnification macro adventure. I'll see you then.