This image was captured in my local woodland about 5 minutes from my home. I've never been so hooked on Winter and snow images, but this Winter I decided to give it a try.

I've always been attracted to light and shadows, but I've always been struggling to find compositions in the Winter season.

My local area has a lot of woodland and Forest, even mountains too, but due to health issues, the mountains are out of reach as of now. My love for woodland photography has given me the much-needed space and time to get away from the daily struggle, both socially and work-related. And the much-needed recharging works great when I'm out and about with my camera.

This image was captured on a cold Sunday afternoon in November 2021, just after we got the first snow. The intention was to capture it with some falling snow to fade out the background, almost like fog. Sadly it stopped snowing so I ended up with a bit more details in the background than first planned. by composing with the light as my main object I decided to build the composition around that brighter area between the trees. This gave me a very nice focal point and a natural connection to the pathway that lead into the image. I still had to deal with the details in the background, but by carefully separating the trees I manage to hide a lot of those more detailed areas in the back. Then I just had to wait for the light, the clouds made some noticeable changes in the ambient light so I just had to be patient, I really liked the composition even without the planned snowfall. The ambient light gave me some very nice contrasts and transitions towards the back of the image, something I think worked well.

Personally, I feel that the fallen tree adds to the title of the image, it's a part of the area and the shadows work nicely on those branches.

I've done some dodging and burning to bring out the depth in the image, some small adjustments have been done to the colour tone mainly on the blue.

I've called the image "Changing"

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