Hiking in the Woods with Only an 85mm Lens
While trying to get out of a creative rut I decided to give myself a bit of a challenge: go out for a hike in the woods with the intention of taking photos, but only bring an 85mm prime lens. While the weather wasn't the most cooperative for getting interesting images, I managed to find some inspiration amongst the trees and create a few compositions.
My first image of the hike came from an interesting patch of light coming through the foliage. In an area like this where the background tends to be extremely busy I look for places where the light speaks to me, where it highlights a potential subject or brings attention to something that would normally go unnoticed. The way the path was illuminated seemed like it could benefit from a subject beyond the path itself, so I decided to use this opportunity to take a self portrait. Looking into the light seemed to be the natural pose here, implying that there is a beautiful vista or awe-inspiring view, when in reality it was just a wall of trees with a small gap that the light was filtering through. As with most of my self portraits I try to shoot two versions, one in portrait orientation, and another in landscape, as you never know when you might need an image in one orientation or the other. Sometimes like for a banner image or the thumbnail of this video you might want a wider format image, even though I personally found that the vertical orientation was more compelling as the dark trees and lack of illumination in the foreground further emphasize the light pooling around my feet.
While I didn’t find any other grand compositions that stood out to me on this hike, in part due to shifting lighting conditions, I did manage to find some smaller, nearly macro images that I found interesting. While walking along a path that ran parallel to a stream I noticed that the light streaming through the trees above reflected in interesting ways on the water. I decided to try to find some images amongst the stones sitting in the water, to try to find a place where the reflected foliage created interesting highlights.
