A White Black Forest

The Black Forest, in southwestern Germany has the sources of the Danube and Neckar rivers. From the Swiss border extending 100 miles (160 km) northwards. It drops sharply to the Rhine in the west, slopeing gently toward the Schwebischer Alps in the east.
Oak and beech woods on the lower slopes, give way to fir forests, climbing to 4,000 feet, but much is open land.
Here are a few photos from a six hour walk. Not an artistic gallery as much as a record of the landscapes.

Birch trees - soft feather look

Here the Birch Tree's fine branches hang gracefully under a relatively light weight of snow. They also keep their gold to purple leaves from autumn well into winter which just adds a slight hint of colour in the blue-grey scene.

The photo is taken from a low viewpoint looking up the slope, behind the trees is a small farmer's access road, this is well maintained with a young tree presumably replacing one which fell.

The sky was dark with snow but visibility was good, the soft outline and feathered branches have symetry to balance the image.

Minimalist composition

The subjects need to be associated with their environment to work well, a lone apple tree and a wildlife observation hide complete the story here.

What cannot be seen is the forest all around, the open space is in no way infinate but the upwards viewing angle gives an airey open feel.

The snow on the apple tree looks almost like blossom as the real scene colour from the sun behind gave a pinkish hint. The smooth snow and naturally graduated sky completes a simple but effective composition.

Here a dark sky, very smooth white snow on the hill and two uninterupted simple features, nothing complex but it works

A dark eveing after the storm

The shafts of sinlight briefly breaking through pesented this photo opportunity. To get the symetry some smartish 150m of running was involved, 200m would have been perfect but the clouds were moving also.

The light shafts highlighting the background immediately behind the trees makes the photo, the jagged breaks in the cloud also look good here but by themselves wouldn't, together we have atmosphere and scale.

Yes, there's some luck involved here, but you have to be ready to grab the shot and predict, when I started running the image was appearing, it wasn't already there. Ultimately this was the better of several with the sun just showing itself without burning out.

A Handheld 5Ds with 85mm at f/1.8 was the setup.

Here the sun is close to setting as the storm clouds disperse, this was a plain grey scene only 10 minutes earlier.

Beech, Birch, Maple & Oak

The dark tree trunks and branches in this backlit photo really look good against a plain grey sky and plain white foreground.

There is a gentle red/purple colour still present on the Birch tree which throws a hint of colour, nicely breaking an otherwise still attractive but more monotone image.

The differing shapes of the trees contrasts with the photo above where the row of birches alone presents a very different image. The clearance between the lower small branches and the ground is solely down to cattle who like to eat the leaves and chew the twigs.

All in all a very rural image which could be anywhere.

Another trees in the snow photo, here the soft contrast and even spacing with complementary but differing species makes a very well framed simple scene.

Layered forest edge

This is a very typical scene in the Black Forest. The taller pines in the background are considereably older and line a forest access track. These give way to a mixture of firs and spruces from semi-commercial processes then again change to a mixture of Hornbeam and deciduous trees before the Hawthorn and Blackthorn edges of the fields.

Commercial forestry has been very heavy and in some instances aggressively managed, this is now being balanced by a return to the original deciduous trees.

The Black Forest gets it's name from the dark dense cover of the fir trees, but almost all of this was planted by man from around 800 to 1,000 years ago. As this has become less profitable and some areas are now protected, a natural balance is now slowly returning, hopefully along with the wildlife which has sadly been driven out over generations.

A row of tall Scots Pines here look down on the Hemlock, Pine and Spruce trees, with Hawthorn and Blackthorn at the front. The Black Forest was originally deciduous before commercial forestry cam several hundred years ago.

A hint of sun in a peaceful setting

A middle of nowhere shot with the sky considerably darker than the snow. The sun starts to lift the contrast and saturate the tree trunk colour adding some warmth.

The tight rolling hills, open spaces, forested areas and small lanes can be seen all in one place; perhaps of all the photos here this one best sums up the feel and look of the immediate locality.

The sunlight breaking through highlights the fresh soft snow in the trees, this will not last long before darkenning as it mmelts & re-freezes or just thaws completely.

A middle of nowhere shot with the sky considerably darker than the snow. The sun starts to lift the contrast and saturate the tree trunk colour adding some warmth.

Deep tracks

The deep snowfall cleared along a very minor road creates a real anchor for this late afternoon image, leading the viewer to the light breaking through the clouds. The road veers to the right and the cloud highlights do also further ading a flow through.

This strong structure uses features which will not always work, there is normally a focal point / feature on the ground. Here instead the open space can be felt. The road itself is interesting but not a photo, the features on the ground are all distant so no focal points; together they work very well.

Just goes to show a balanced photograph is possible even when many rules have to be broken.

Late evening as the light finally starts to leave, this is one of the "local view records" rather than a galley piece but it does give a very clear picture of how it was.