Went for a walk round Fitzgerald Park in Cork while there are still some leaves on the trees. Got there just before the rain!
I think it's important to work with colours and tones when working within forests/parks as sometimes due to taking photos under shade it can flatten or desaturate the images slightly. There is also sometimes a very fine line between over green/ a bluer green and then going the other way with a yellowy green when editing. I made my own preset in Lightroom which I use as a base for all shots based around trees/parks/forests. I tend to create a preset with basics added then tweak that to save some time and provide some consistency within the group of shots I want to work on.
Here's the link to the preset I made if you're interested where I tend to start from for these kind of shots: Here
Some basic tips for shooting/editing a lot of greenery:
- Black and white are great but all colours of green will provide roughly the same tone of grey which could flatten out your image. Don't shy away from colour if you can help it!
- Adding warmth via temperature will quickly start giving your greens a golden/yellow look. This can look great if that is the desired effect. If you want to counter this I'd recommend keeping the tint away from the green side in Lightroom, and instead tweaking the HSL parameters to tweak the green hues then drop the saturation just a touch in yellows.
- Drop highlights down to avoid glare through the trees, as well as balancing leaves hit by the light. Don't forget to remove Chromatic Aberration if you do have light shining through in your shot as leaves in the background will be causing a lot of unwanted purples and reds to show up.
The below shots were taken last month in and around Killarney National Park. Plenty of greenery there!
