Blidworth Woods (March 2018)

Wooded areas are not always the first choice for golden hour photography. The views are often restricted and the sun tends to drop below the tree line too early losing some of the best light.

There are, however, a couple of ways to overcome this. The first is finding a part of the wood that is situated on higher ground with the sun broadly over the shoulder. The higher the better really, as the higher ground loses the light later than the lower areas - to state the obvious.

Then it is a case of watching the light, how it moves from ground level to the top of the trees. I particularly like waiting for the soft highlights as this selection, in reserve time order, demonstrates:

In addition, there is always some room for improvisation in landscape photography. On this occasion I used some standing water to reflect the changing light conditions. This allowed the sky to feature in the compositions, countering the closed nature of a wood I mentioned at the start of the post. I repeated the shot several times over a 20 minute period as the light gradually faded:

The last shot shows the view from the top of the path and gives an indication of the elevation in this part of Blidworth Woods.

I think it is also worth mentioning that all the above images were taken with a compact camera, handheld and no tripod. This demonstrates that it is possible to enjoy golden hour photography without a big bag of equipment.