“You just need to find the right trees”

Oaks in an ancient Scottish woodland filled with autumnal colour by Will Plunkett — Oaks in an ancient Scottish woodland

So, I want to spend some time discussing scouting. Scouting for me is the most important element when it comes to making successful and fulfilling woodland images. I like to think of woodland photography as a constantly ongoing project and scouting and re-scouting/revisiting an area makes up a big part of this process.

For me, in woodland photography, it’s the trees who are the stars, not the photographers and I think that is worth bearing in mind. I believe the only secret to a good woodland image is the trees that make up the composition (we will look more at composition in my next tutorial). You can add fog and you can add light/colour but for me, it’s simply finding the right trees to shoot that is the biggest challenge. Not all woodlands are made equal when it comes to photographic purposes and that’s something we can take both comfort and frustration in. If you want to improve your woodland images, you need to improve your scouting. You do scout right?

Why Should I Scout?

If you think about landscape photography in general, location or features are the key elements in making a successful image and that's why so many of us flock to places like Iceland, Scotland or the Lake District, and even more so to specific spots; ‘the honeypot’, whether that be Bamburgh castle for sunrise, Elgol on a stormy day, or a moody Iceland. If you think about why we return it will often be to capture these scenes in the best conditions to make an image we perceive to be optimal from that location,

It's exactly he same with woodland photography, only in a woodland, it’s often much harder to find the honeypot and that's why I, and you, should spend time scouting. Once you have your location, it’s a case of learning how to harness the potential, finding the strongest compositions that the woodland has to offer and then getting the conditions to bring the image to life. Again, this is no different to landscape photography as a whole but in woodland photography, actually finding the key subject of interest can be more challenging. The two images below for example came about from spending time exploring two separate woodlands on multiple occasions until I found the compositions and matched them with the conditions required to make the images I had visualised. This is no different to visiting Bamburgh several times during hight tide and sunrise until I got the ideal conditions to make the image I captured above.

Where to start?

So how do we find where to go in the first place I hear you say, well I am getting to that and it’s all resource and time dependant. Below is a list of all my resources and how I use them.

Google Maps – We are all familiar with google maps and have all probably used it at some point for navigation but I find it invaluable for finding woodlands, particularly for trying to see the makeup of the canopy (types of tree’s etc), and space between trees.
Ordinance Survey (OS) maps – Allows me to assess the access to the woodlands I’m interested in.
Map of ancient woodlands - Often a starting point for my google map searches, this tool shows you all the locations of ancient woodlands within the area you are searching. https://data-forestry.opendata.arcgis.com/
Ancient tree inventory - A catalogue of ancient trees uploaded by users, a great resource if you are looking to shoot a specific kind of tree, downy birch for example. https://ati.woodlandtrust.org.uk/

As you can see from the list above, I use a combination of resources when it comes to scouting but my main tools are google maps (using the satellite imaging layer) and Ordinance Survey (OS) maps. Google allows you to pick out an area of interest and OS maps allow you to see how accessible the wood/forest might be. Access is of vital importance, and often proves a stumbling block. There is a woodland I pass almost daily that more than once has nearly resulted in me doing a Marc Bolan (well Gloria Jones) and wrapping my car around a tree as I gaze up at it with wonder. Unfortunately, this wood is on private land and despite multiple attempts to contact the landowner, I have yet to be successful, so for now, that woodland is off limits.

I digress, once I have found an area of interest that is accessible, I will use the name of the woodland as stated on OS maps to first do a dirty search (this is what we called using google to search for journal articles when I was a science undergrad and it’s stuck). Sometimes this will bear fruit and show the nature of the woodland with pictures. Other times it will return nothing, but there is no harm in trying.

I think it will be easier to explain this using a specific example as I talk through my process, so with this in mind, I have selected this area of woodland from google maps and have the OS map next to it showing the available access. The woodland is listed as Brusselton wood. A quick dirty search reveals there are both Oaks and bluebells in this wood (season depending), so we are off to a good start.

Google maps shows areas of open canopy and the canopy appears to be that of oaks, with time you are soon able to take a pretty accurate guess of the trees within the wood from the google maps images. OS maps, as you can see, shows a footpath through the wood so access should be possible.

Below is an example of how the canopy looks for silver birch, oak and pine woodlands.

Into the Woods:

The next process in my scouting workflow would be to actually visit the wood. Here I want to talk about the 4 key elements to my scouting workflow when visiting a woodland.

Conditions best for scouting
When to scout
Familiarisation
Cataloguing

First off, we will look at the conditions for scouting - I find the best conditions to scout are overcast, flat conditions because it allows us to look at the trees without any contrast caused by direct sunlight or harsh lighting conditions. Scouting takes a degree of imagination so therefore don’t worry if a show stopping composition doesn’t initially jump out at you. Scouting takes time, and often familiarisation. However, the more we practice scouting the easier spotting potential for scenes becomes.

Next is when to scout – Personally I find winter and early spring scouting to be the easiest as it’s often the time of the year when woodlands are most accessible (due to the die back of foliage which can often be a problem in summer and early autumn). If we spend our time scouting through the winter, it can really set us up for when spring rolls around and the woodlands burst to life with a cacophony of colours and smells. It also means when this is repeated in autumn, we can easily find our way to wonderful compositions we have previously spotted with little or no effort.

Third, and probably most importantly, is familiarisation which I have already touched on, but if you are new to woodland photography or even if you have been shooting for a while, familiarisation is key. Even now I visit woodlands I’ve been going to for several years and I am still finding new compositions that I have not previously seen. Familiarity in woodland is the most important gift we can give ourselves. It’s said familiarity breeds contempt but for me, it leads a path to success when applied to woodlands. So, once you have found an area, with what you believe to be potential, visit and visit often if you can.

Lastly, whilst I am scouting, I often use my phone to take reference shots. This helps in two ways. First, it gives me a catalogue of future shots I want to return to when the conditions and seasons are more favourable. Second, with my phone’s geo-location feature, it will tag exactly where the shot was taken so I can easily come back to it. In smaller woods this may not be an issue, but when scouting larger areas, changes in conditions or even just time, can make it hard to remember exactly where that tree/scene of interest was. Having these reference images also gives us the change to review them with ease and can often lead to new ideas and tweaks we would make to these scouting images for the final scene we hope to shoot.

Illustrating the geotagging feature of images taken overlayed on a satellite map pinpointing location for future return.

Putting it into practice:

Below are 6 images I took on my first visit to Brusselton. I hope over the next couple of weeks to return to this wood, once the oaks are in leaf and the ground is filled with bluebells, to turn these scouting snapshots into the stunning compositions I hope they can be. As we said earlier, this is where your imagination comes into play. I try to think what the scene would look like with some splashes of colour and a veil of fog (the special source of magic in woodland images) but even on day with blue skies and sunlight, I could tell there was potential. Get to know the charatures in your woodland and they will return the favour by giving up their secrets.

Below is an example of a scouting shot and then the image I made on returning in more favourable conditions having tweaked the composition. This is where that catalogue and familiarity really come into play.

Whilst scouting is fundamental, it isn’t always necessary if the woodland has been scouted or shot previously. For example, the woodlands of Padley Gorge, Witsman Wood or the Madeiran Forest of Fanal can often be shot on sight, as I did with image below which was made within about 30 minutes of my first visit to Fanal. This is especially tempting if the conditions are favourable, but even in these places, taking time to explore and scout will give us a greater potential to succeed and helps to prevent headless chicken mode, which is often how I was in my early days of being in a mist shrouded woodland. Scouting ahead allows us to relax and be more methodical when the conditions are favourable so we can enjoy our time in the woods knowing we have already visualised what we want to shoot. If you haven’t pre-scouted an area, arriving when the conditions are ideal, can place a lot of pressure on you and in these instances, I often find myself chasing the shot. If you already have a few compositions in mind however, once these are in the bag, you can relax into it and you’ll often be amazed at how many other shots you can then start to pick out.

Closing Statements:

So that’s it. Hopefully you’ve found this tutorial of some use and maybe you can start to bring some of these scouting practices into your own work. I hope it helps you to find some wonderful woodlands of your own and if it does (or even if you just found this tutorial interesting or informative), I would love to hear from you, so please feel free to drop a comment below. Questions are always encouraged! I will be releasing another tutorial next week on woodland composition and how we begin to put the pieces of the jigsaw together to make meaningful images. In the meantime, happy scouting.

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Woodland photography is easy