Black & White Woodland Photography in Berlin’s Forests

Seven Black & White Photos of a Forest landscape in Berlin.

Landscape photography is challenging — especially if you’ve spent a lot of time in a city environment, and been working on your street photography more often than looking at trees, and fields, and lakes.

I live in Berlin. It’s a great city, the architecture is fascinating and the streets always have something new to offer a photographer on the hunt for a motif to photograph. But there comes a time when a photographer yearns for something deeper than cars and people, bricks and mortar, and asphalt jungle shots.

Landscapes, woodlands, and lakes offer a new set of challenges in the form of different light, more complex shadows and broader views to fit into the photographer’s frame.

I chose to photograph the woods down in Müggelsee, Berlin. A place on the outskirts of Berlin’s bustling city.

I’ve been out and about in the countryside a few times recently, and my first problem was that everything is so damned green. It can be hard to find a decent angle, and the idea of a frame within the composition of green upon green is a little daunting at first.

It must be the city dweller in me. I told myself to start thinking in black and white, which would allow me to focus on composition more than having to deal with the finer shades of a single colour — green — with a backdrop of deep brown and red tree bark.

This helped a lot. The textures then become more important than trying to compose colour. The tones show up prominently, and the idea of getting those lovely accents between bright sunshine and heavy shadows turned into a fun challenge while shooting black and white shots around the…