Shooting Ancient Trees in a Storm — The Shots That Surprised Me

A big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Well, morning everybody. Fantastic to see you all again. I'm back in Madeira, one of my favorite places in the world. And it's a very wet Madeira. I was here yesterday. We're going to start yesterday in this exact same forest when it was throwing it down with rain. I got some pretty good photos, I think. And I'm back. I'm going to keep out of the main area and just see what I can get. I'll talk a little bit about my sort of process when I take woodland photos. But look at this. It's incredible. And it's starting to throw it down with rain again. Yay! — So, as you can probably see, it is raining very hard. I'm in uh I saw him place in Fanal that I think a lot of people come to, and I found these really nice trees here. So, um my third trip to Madeira and wow, it's started. Quite exciting, but very, very wet. — So, the rain was just torrential and I couldn't record any more video. It was just impossible. So, I took these photos handheld. Um I put it on 1/60 of a second, ISO 1,000. And I feel like I actually got some pretty decent images. This is so crazy. This rain is so hard. There's like waterfalls over there, but I'm just not sheltering a little bit under this big tree here. But wow. Okay, so I've just come in down the hill in the car. It was horrendous rain. I just couldn't shoot anymore. It was just way too wet. But this is pretty cool here. Um there's some really nice trees. The I love the sort of color of the bark and the greens of the ferns. Looks really good. The water's making everything dense. It's horrible weather. It might be quite good with a polarizing filter, but I think it's going to be okay like this. So, I'm photographing this scene here with these three trees. I think it looks pretty good. Probably do another one with a little bit higher as well, but the problem is that there's quite a lot of sky in it and I don't really want that. This place is so epic. Oh, I can't wait to come back when it's Well, to be honest, this is amazing. Don't need to come back. — Okay, I've just come a little bit further into the woodlands here and this is a great example of a shot where you're using depth. And especially on a day like today where it's really, really foggy and you just want to create that illusion of depth. Um so, we've got this near tree here. Uh I've got to think carefully about my aperture. So, I've got it on like F um 13 at the moment. Uh and there's going to be a bit of movement in it, but I've got it ISO 800 to try and stop some of that. And then just shooting through this amazing scene. Doesn't get better than this. Yes. Right. Well, the weather's definitely improving. The sun just came out for a second then. I'm actually sat outside. Why not? In Madeira, it's pretty warm in this amazing house that we've got. Um I don't know. We This wasn't super expensive and look at the views. It's absolutely incredible. Hot tub. Um and it's near this beautiful church up there as well. But anyway, before I go back to the woodland, um I think it's going to be rainy there again today, but I just want to check my photos. And actually, they turned out well. I mean, I took some of them handheld as well, which I hardly ever do with woodland photography. So, I'm looking forward to going back. See what I can get. I think it's going to be really, really good. Um before I do that, I just want to say thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this week's video. If you're looking to build a website, maybe you've never done that before, um and you've not got a huge amount of technical skills, then Squarespace is the perfect platform to do that. It's really easy. You can just drag and drop things, move things around. There's loads of templates for you to design your website

as well. And if you want to start selling things, you can do that as well. Like I sell my books, my calendars, my prints through there. Um and it's super easy to do. If you're looking for a website, then check out Squarespace and go to squarespace. com/nigel or use offer code nigel for 10% off. Right. Prepare to get wet again? I don't know. I'll just sit here and have a coffee. Right. Back to today now. Yesterday was amazing here, but I did get very, very wet. Um and today I'm just going to explore some areas again away from the main area and just go down some of the paths. Just see what there is. Just some things that are a bit different. I mean, this is such an amazing area you can see I'm in now. There's a bit of a river there. I mean, it's caused by the incredible amount of water. But I think I might get something pretty interesting if I just — just explore a little bit. I'm taking — this shot here, which is just a lone tree. And I sometimes take groups of trees like threes or fives or sometimes a tree that is that just stands on its own really well. And this looks absolutely amazing. At the moment, there's not quite enough fog. Uh so, I'm just waiting for the wind to blow more fog through. But what's really good about this tree is you can see here that this branch is a slightly closer to the screen. So, just is attenuated a little bit less by the fog and it just looks so amazing. Um I'll probably try a few different angles. Going to be a little bit careful cuz I'm putting my camera up and I'm shooting around about ISO 800, a quarter of a second at F8. And I might go to F10. This little area of woodland is so special and I guarantee that not many people probably come down here and photograph it. Um I'm going to go to the main Fanal bit and I'll show you the fences. Um which I've not seen them yet. I've not been there, but I've heard that it's a little bit tricky to shoot those trees. Right. I'm just going to jump into the scene here. Got this amazing laurel tree. Um just still a spectacular location. Um and Yuru who's with me was just shooting this tree um saying that this looks like an arm and a face. And I agree. It's a really characterful tree. Um it was interesting cuz Yuru was shooting it wider angle than I was. He was shooting at around about 16 mil, I think. And I'm shooting at about 24 mil. So, I'll show you his photo and my photos cuz they're quite different. And he was a little bit further down there. So, he had a bigger gap here, which I think is important. But I think I'm just about far enough so that gap's enough not to look distracting. The really difficult thing here is there's just not quite enough fog. So, the bright areas can get a little bit distracting. We need a little bit of fog and that'll just sort of blend those bright areas um in a little bit. But yeah, just having everything wet just makes everything look so much better. It's so good here. It doesn't get better than this, does it? — Right. So, yesterday I was walking through here it was when it was its hardest rain. And this water that was coming off the field near where the main sort of trees are the um UNESCO World Heritage sort of main site. And you couldn't get across this, but I think I'm going to be able to get across now. So, got to be careful, but I think I should be able to. Um there's a lot more mist here as well. So, I think it should be good. Right. So, I've just got to try not to die, basically. Um oh god. Not a good start. Let's go. Boom. Made it. Yay! Right. So, now I'm in a new area that I have never been in before. And this looks so spectacular.

Oh my word, look at this. This tree I have photographed this tree before. I photographed this tree um back in 2020. Oh, wow, yeah. This is so cool. So I've got this tree here and I might have to just sort of work my way around it and maybe come over here. But these rocks are amazing. Everything's wet. And the branches of the tree just looks so spectacular. Oh, this is so good. Right. And the other thing is that the as you can see the mist just keeps changing. So you've just got to keep taking photos and just hopefully one of them will have the right amount of mist on. That makes such a big difference when you're taking shots like this. Um I'm going to have to go up to maybe ISO 1000 cuz I want to try and um not have too much blurriness in the leaves. Right, quick, quick, go. So because I was traveling light on this trip cuz I thought I was going to do quite a lot of hiking, I brought my smaller tripod and so I regret that now because I really need to be quite high here to get the shot. You can see can you see that um rock at the bottom left there? And the it if I go too low it sort of intersects with that branch in the background. I don't want it to be separate. Now I probably should have my wider angle lens on as well but I don't worry about that too much. I can just do a vertical panel so I'll take a shot like that and shot like that there. Um I'll probably have it a bit like one like that and one like that. This is such a nice shot. It's just waiting for the most amount of fog. This is so good. Oh my word. Right, so I'm shooting at probably about ISO 800 F8 and it's going to be around about 40th of a second. I probably want to go maybe up ISO might go up to ISO 1600. — [singing] — It's amazing how — much water there is in this sort of little lake lagoon here. This tree here, which is now broken and fallen down, I took this tree 3 years ago I think. I'll show you the photo now. There was a bit of sun coming through. It was a lovely photo. I really enjoyed it. I don't think I could take it now cuz I think I've got to be in the middle of the water. It's absolutely crazy. Um but that just shows you how much something changes. I'd love to be able to do it. I It maybe if I walk around the bank I can get to the other side but I think there'll be too much mist then. Wow. And I think this tree is broken and fallen down. But still looks like it's growing. God. Look at this tree here. I wonder how old it is. It's so spectacular. These ferns just growing off it. Oh my word. It's so special. There's a bit of opening here now. So I might go into that and then duck back down into the woodland. Um I don't think this will make a great shot. It's It looks good but I don't think there's too much like sky through that gap there and it'll look unless the fog gets really dense I think it'll just all blend in. So I've come to the just far end of the field. The car park's over there and um there's no um things around these trees so they look really good. Uh I think I'm still going to head more into the woodland though. I do like shooting these but I feel like um it's better in the woodland. And there's you Rune. Wave. You're on camera. So although these amazing giant laurels look so impressive I think they're quite hard to photograph. Um they're quite a dense mass in the middle of the photo. Um I'm still going to try

and just try and separate them a little bit here. It looks so spectacular. And I'm just going to drop off of this side. Hopefully there'll be some fog and I know there's some really nice trees there. This is so cool. Yeah, these giant trees are just giant. So I came to this spot here and I marked it on my map. Always a good idea if you've got a favorite tree or something just put a pin on Google or whatever mapping software you use. But I came here when I the Z8 launched and did a video for Nikon on the launch of the Z8 and um I've always wanted to come back because I lost the photos. I It's the only photos I've ever lost in my life. And I just for some reason thought I had them a copy of them over and I hadn't done and I deleted and formatted the hard drive. Um so I want to retake a photo I took here. And it's perfect conditions for it so I'm going to show you in a second. It is these trees here and specifically this tree here. It is so epic. So I'm set up here and hopefully won't delete this one when I get it. So I probably just need to be a little bit further down here. Oh, it's so nice. Okay, so I'm set up here. I'm shooting at around about 35 mm. And as you can see this mist just keeps coming through. There's a lot of wind so I've got to be a really careful about the moving branches. I'm going to do two shots. one at about ISO 1000 probably 100th of a second and another one probably around about ISO 64 and maybe 2 seconds. It'll really odd everything will be blurry but I just want to try it. I think it's I might as well. I'm here. And it's good to try things. I've got my all the time I've had my 24-120 lens on which is my favorite woodlands lens. Um but there's so many other trees to photograph around here. It's so cool. I actually think we might get some sun. There's just a chance that the cloud tops will drop and we'll get some sun through. — This is a great example of a scene where you really want to try and think carefully about all the branches. So you know, these branches can't overlap the branches in the back. I think I've used this tree to hide a tree behind it so it's not just sort of popping out and looking a bit awkward. And — [sighs] — it just looks so good. I honestly think it's getting a bit brighter. If we had a little bit of sun now just would really add something to the shot. — But it's so good now. — So that's it for finale I think. Um it's been pretty spectacular. I can't wait to look at some of these photos, talk a bit what's worked, what hasn't worked in the studio and get some prints. What a place this is. It's absolutely stunning. —