I’ve talked a lot about how I really learned to love winter light, but much of that is tied up into learning to love how the density of wooded areas in the mid-Atlantic changes visually after all the leaves have dropped in winter.
In the summer I find it hard to photograph the tangled wall of green that dominates a lot of uncleared forest in the North American east. Trees rise but are often surrounded at ground level by dense shrubbery, parasitic vines, and various kinds of ground cover. The light doesn’t make long shadows, but you wouldn’t be able to see many of them anyway—the shadows and their defining power is diffused by leaves and vegetation at all levels of the forest.
Winter suddenly remakes everything. You can see through the trees to what lies beyond. Shadows multiply everywhere you look. The twigs and shrubs become a kind of grey haze that sometimes matches, as in these images, mist rising from water or the ground. Sky and sun suddenly partner with forest, and light enters its heart.
There is something ethereal about a stand of trees without leaves...maybe the force of this lies in the uncertainty...that not everything will survive while some will find their way. Thanks for the focus, Tim.
I learned on Noah Kahan's episode of the Song Exploder podcast that in Vermont, this time of year--the interval after the leaves have fallen from the trees but before the snow--if called stick season. (Although his song of that name isn't exactly celebrating it.)
Definitely a lot of visual interest here. I've thought that nature photography in the summer is counterintuitively unsatisfying: it seems so nice to be out, and green is good and full of life, but the sun angles and contrast between sun and shade means that most photographs of pleasant spaces are disappointing.
(Also it looks like there's something wrong with one image? At least I'm getting a missing image icon at the top of the text.)