Foxcovert Nature Reserve (November 2018)

The day after my visit to Clipstone Forest, see my previous two posts, the sun was shining and the autumn colours looked spectacular in Foxcovert Nature Reserve. The bold blues skies were the perfect backdrop to vivid yellows oranges leaves and I found the best way to capture this colour was looking up to the top of the trees, which was a very engaging activity but somewhat dizzying as I will explain below.

I think the best results are achieved by getting right under the subject trees, looking straight up and using the tree trunk to anchor the composition from one corner of the frame. The compositions can be altered by changing the frame format (e.g. portrait, landscape, perhaps square), zooming in or out, and by physically rotating oneself to get the best arrangement of trees - hence becoming dizzy at times! 

To illustrate the effectiveness of this method I have included the following image which was composed more conventionally but was ultimately less successful in my opinion. The wider and less steep shooting angle takes away some of the impact of the images above as it is harder to identify a clear subject tree, although the colours are still great!

These were some of the other similar style compositions I made on the day. I particularly like the shape of the trees in the first image: