Looking for a Summer Photography Project? Try Woodscapes and Skyscapes

Submitted by Keith Bridgman

I'm always kicking off some kind of photo project. Most are rather simple and short lived and can be completed in a few days or maybe a few weeks, although, I have done year long projects and seemingly endless ones like photographing the Tallgrass Prairie. Summer of course is a great time of year to kick off a project or two. Two projects I plan on pursuing in more detail this season are Woodscapes and Skyscapes.

Woodscapes are possibly one of the more difficult of projects because of the nature of the light found inside a wooded area. Often high contrast lighting can play havoc with exposures, but also coming into play is clutter. Woodscapes are notorious for clutter. As a photographer shooting woodscapes you must constantly ask yourself..."what is my subject?" There are so many competing elements found within woodscapes it is difficult to isolate what is important and focus on creating the story you are emotionally experiencing.

Effectively reproducing what you are seeing as 3 dimensions into a 2 dimensional flat image can be quite a challenge. That is why shooting Woodscapes is such a good project because it forces you to look beyond the visual and focus on the emotional.

Color is also a problem because woodscapes tend to take on a single color tonality, especially during the summer when everything is green. Translating the story from within a monotone green perspective can present quite a challenge to the photographer. A good deal of the time I will often look for opportunities to translate the moment into a black and white image. This of course almost eliminates the monotone color issue but it does not always solve the clutter issue, but it does help.

Skyscapes on the other hand are much easier to shoot simply because of their scale. Summer days are often filled with a wide range of cloud formations, and clouds are what make skyscapes work. In fact you could probably substitute Cloudscapes for Skyscapes as a title.

The contrast of a blue sky and white clouds makes for a wonderful black and white translation. It is outside the scope of this post to detail the post processing techniques to convert a blue sky/white cloud photograph into a black and white photo. The idea however is to avoid blowing out the white portions and subduing the blue areas and creating a composition that is not only pleasing, but revealing. A polarizer filter goes a long ways to taming skyscapes.

This season  I hope to spend a lot of time shooting woodscapes and skyscapes. With any luck at all I might even be able to create a timelapse video event as well. Give it a try this season and enjoy the great outdoors in the process.