A Misty Morning in the Woods

I do not have much luck when it comes to misty mornings in the woods. No matter how much attention I pay to the weather forecast and weather apps I just don’t seem to be able to pick the right morning to head out. I’m also very skilled at picking the wrong location on the right morning! 

I tend to pick a location that I want to photograph in the fog and stick to it rather than have a range of locations I could choose from depending on where the fog is. The woodlands I’ve chosen previously are often an hour or so away from my home and I’ve had to drive through beautiful foggy conditions to reach them only to find that when I get to the location there is no fog!

Over the summer I have spent quite a lot of time finding a few woodlands a little bit closer to home that I’d be able to get to quickly when the right conditions were forecast and that I could easily visit multiple days in a row to give myself the best chance of being able to spend a misty morning in the woods. 

Armed with my new list of locations, I was ready and waiting for the weather forecast to give the go ahead to put my plan into action…

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A Misty Morning In The Woods – The Vlog

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The Location

I’m going to keep this exact location under wraps, not because I’m selfish and don’t want to share it with other photographers but because I don’t think that it would benefit from an increase in footfall. I know I’m not a world famous photographer with hundreds of thousands of followers, but you never know I might be one day, ha! So, just in case I’ll keep it quiet for now. 

It’s a beautiful oak woodland not too far from where I live that I’ve scouted a couple of times over the summer. It’s my favourite of the woodlands I’ve visited in the past few months, one that I have known about for years, but it had completely escaped my memory and my consideration as a photography location until this year.

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The Photos

My woodland photography is something I’ve been trying to improve this year, I say improve but what I really mean is start. I’ve taken one or two photos over the years where the primary subject has been a tree or a woodland scene but for the most part it has been a secondary subject in any photo it has appeared in. 

I’m pretty sure that this was my first time shooting in misty conditions in the woods, I don’t remember another time previously, and I have to say it was one of the most enjoyable mornings of photography I’ve had for a long time!

Warm light in a dark forest – The First One

I wasn’t too sure how long the mist would last, it already felt like it was dispersing a little before I had even taken my first shot! I had probably spent a little bit too much time wandering around the woodland when I first arrived looking for compositions I could focus on and talk about in the vlog. However, the tree in the foreground of this image had attracted my attention early on, so I headed back to it to try and find a composition and take my first shot before I lost the mist altogether. It’s set a little deeper in the woodland but along with the tree itself, I was attracted by the warm light and hint of mist creeping into the woodland in the distance. My aim with the composition of this shot was to try and keep the main trees separate from one another as much as possible and show that warm light gently entering the woodland.

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Oak Wood Dawn – The Second One

My favourite image from the morning… I think. 

Moving just a short distance from my first image would add more warmth to the this image and allow me to include the early morning sun in the photo. It would take quite a bit of shuffling around and repositioning to be able to get the main trees separated as much as possible as well as include a sun star in the frame but I got there eventually. I waited for the sun to move past an obscuring branch, exposed for the bright areas and grabbed the shot for the sun star first followed quickly by a shot exposed correctly for the woodland, and blended them together in Photoshop.

Purchase Oak Wood Dawn in store

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Forest Glow – The Third One

I was beginning to think might have enjoyed the best of the morning mist but as the woodland was warmed by the rising sun, the mist began to increase again and was enhanced further by the addition of some beautiful light rays. Having not experienced conditions like this before I had no idea how long they would last, so I made the decision to concentrate less on finding compositions based around the positions of the trees and more on letting the light decide my compositions. This is a point and shoot image, I just made sure I positioned myself so there wasn’t anything too distracting on the edges of the frame.

Purchase Forest Glow in store

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Like a child in a sweet shop – The Fourth One

Everywhere I turned looked spectacular and, as per the previous image, it was just a case of choosing which set of light rays I pointed my camera at for my next shot. I chose the most defined light rays I could see which were quite nicely positioned within a grouping of trees. Again, I just tried to make sure that there wasn’t anything too distracting on the edges of the frame and that the trees within the scene were separated as well as possible. The sunlight was bright by this point so I had to keep and eye on the histogram to make sure the highlights weren’t getting overexposed, whilst keeping as much detail in the shadows as possible. The final decision for a square crop came during post production although I considered it in the field and made sure I took that into account when framing the shot.

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The Perfect Misty Morning In The Woods

What an incredible morning of photography! It was one of those mornings where you’re not really concerned with the photos you’re getting, you’re just enjoying the process of capturing them and watching the show that nature was providing. 

For my first time shooting in a misty woodland, I’m pretty pleased with the photos I’ve managed to capture in this vlog. It would’ve been difficult not to capture a few images that I liked from a morning like this when the conditions are doing all the work for me! It ended up being a completely different and much more enjoyable experience of woodland photography than those that I have previously had. 

I’m really pleased that the scouting I did earlier in the summer paid off this time, and I got to experience this beautiful misty morning in the woods.

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Recent Blog Posts

Here are some more of my recent blog posts covering my YouTube vlogs – watch the video, read about the locations and have another look at the photos I managed to capture.

My location for motivation | Stiperstones

Escaping the crowds in Snowdonia | Afon Cynfal

Searching for bluebells in the Cambrian Mountains

For more photos from across Wales, the UK and beyond follow my Instagram account

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