Taking Photos in the Forest of Viaduct Park

Viaduct Park is a relatively small park, a link in a larger chain of parks in the area, and a part of the Bedford Reservation. The main section consists of a walkway that takes you down to Tinkers Creek. The creek then dramatically spills over to The Great Falls of Tinkers Creek. The area near the creek and down and around the falls is beautiful. I was hoping to get some great shots of the surrounding area. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that the light would not be good enough for what I was attempting to do which was essentially taking photos in the forest.

It was near the golden hour and the light should have been perfect. I didn’t take into account the many tall trees that effectively blocked out the majority of the light.

With light being the primary component of photography, it’s difficult for a new photographer to get good pictures with minimal light. This is especially the case because I was shooting completely manual. This meant that I would have to figure this out on my own.

With the trees blocking the light I had to find instances where the sun would peek through and provide light. Those instances were few and far between. But when I did, the results were great.

The problem was that I was still learning to take pictures on a manual with a DSLR so many of the pictures were out of focus and not as clear as I had hoped. This was partially the result of my lowering the shutter speed to let in more light.

When I did manage to get clear pictures, I liked the results. I was able to use the light that I was given and produce the photographs that I liked.

Some of the best results were pics where I was able to get out into the river while stepping on rocks. There was a couple sitting on a ledge that was backlit that I got a few pics of. With more experience, I would have been able to do more with the scene.

The other pics that came out well were the pics of daisies and other wildflowers. They happened to be in the stream of sunlight that peeked through the forest. This produced a bit of a spotlight effect on the flowers which I was able to enhance once I got home and edited the photos.

Lessons learned:

Golden hour is great, but with the sun closer to the horizon, it doesn’t have quite the same effect when you’re in a park surrounded by trees. There were also areas that were partially blocked by cliffs. And those cliffs had trees on top of them.

I realized that if I’m going to take pics in this park, I’ll have to come a bit earlier in the day when the sun is higher in the sky to get the light that I need.

Learning to adjust the ISO instead of relying solely on shutter speed and aperture would have also helped. That way I could’ve gotten more light in my photos even in shaded areas.

Knowing the area that you plan to shoot is essential. So is knowing where the light is going to be and how it’s going to affect your photos. For the most part, when I’m going to a heavily forested area, I’ll be sure to arrive earlier. It also will take practice and experience, because in some aspects, having the sun at that angle and coming through the trees worked out. If that’s what I was looking for.