Composition – Photographing Trees

Tim Parkin

Tim Parkin is a British landscape photographer, writer, and editor best known as the co-founder of On Landscape magazine, where he explores the art and practice of photographing the natural world. His work is thoughtful and carefully crafted, often focusing on subtle details and quiet moments in the landscape rather than dramatic vistas. Alongside his photography and writing, he co-founded the Natural Landscape Photography Awards, serves as a judge for other international competitions. Through all these projects, Parkin has become a respected and influential voice in contemporary landscape photography.

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Blair Loch – Sony A900, Sigma DG 28-70 - Dav Thomas

Well we’ve introduced the two most important aspects of composition, balance and flow, what next. Well, we could talk about these two alone for quite a while - the idiosyncracies of each of these will be part of our discussions in future episodes.

In this issue I’d like to talk a little about taking photographs in woodland, of trees and shrubs and other complex subjects. A lot is talked about the difficulties in composing in woodland and distilling the natural chaos and I hope I can pass on a few techniques for simplifying things.

I’ll start with an obvious one for many of you but it bears repeating. When you are wandering around the woods, you are seeing in three dimensions. When you take a photograph, you are seeing in two dimensions. Very often you will see a view that works really well with leading lines and background/foreground but you need to be really wary that this view doesn’t rely on depth perception in order to work.