There’s something magical and captivating about trees and woodland. Each of us are so familiar with trees, whether it’s through children’s book illustrations and stories when we were young, or just spending time wandering through a woodland. A breathing space in a busy world. For me, woodland is one of the more challenging environments to photograph successfully and in particular scrubby mixed woodland like the one near my home that I photograph most often. There is just so much going on – fallen trees and branches on the ground, leaning trunks and thousands of crossing branches everywhere.
When heavy rain falls and saturates colours I find it accentuates shapes so I go out then if possible. I’m usually out for at least a few hours just slowly looking round to see if any shapes catch my eye. The following shapes are the ones that usually grab my attention.
I deliberately keep the sky out of my photographs mainly because I feel it adds depth to the woodland. As an artist I love drawing the woodland in this way and I can spend many happy hours working on the various tones to achieve the effect that I’m after.
Shona Grant visual artist 