Published May 12, 2026 in Stories
A stroll amongst the garlic wildflowers
Landing here? This was posted in the Burren Stories & Articles, a section of The Burren Light & Land Irish landscape photography project.
For a landscape photographer used to the beautiful open landscapes around the Burren, venturing into the woods for photography can be quite a daunting experience. So much clutter! What could easily be avoided is now 'in your face': dead branches, crawling ivy, fallen trees... Even the sky which I would normally try to include as a balancing element, needs to be avoided as much as possible to avoid unnecessary distraction. My first few times in the local woodland, Coole Park and Garryland, were a complete disaster! Without an uncluttered foreground to scale, or leading lines, it can all look very bi-dimensional. Until you do find those, you need to keep trying, to find a way, and succeed.
With practice and documentation, I learnt that few things will also make your woodland photography that bit more fulfilling: fog, diffused light, and flowers. While flowers offer great foreground and potential leading lines as they meander into the woodland, fog tones down distraction and, just as diffused light, gives an additional dimension to a composition.
On seeing the forecast for the following morning, I had the camera ready for a bit of woodland adventure. Fog or mist in woodland is never a given, as much as we see it rise over fields before sunrise it's always hit or miss in the woods.
Is always is a great experience, to be walking into a woodland shrouded in a little bit of fog. The world is narrowed down to only what is nearer, branches fade upwards, distance disappears. It is quiet, strangely comforting. A wonderful experience for most, eerie for some. I love it!
On a clear day this composition would show the edge of a road a little further past the end of the footpath. Here, the fog has faded some of the background vegetation, drawing additional focus to the flowery, dreamy foreground and middle ground.
The path draws the eye deeper into the woods, mist dissolves distant elements into pale light. The garlic wildflowers now seem to endlessly progress info the distant foreground, making the photograph even more interesting.
The woodland captured here is full of detail — leaves, textures, flowers, branches — yet thankfully, nothing feels chaotic.
I was very pleased to have found some clutter free compositions! In fairness, the fog simplified the scene, softening the background and fading out pretty much all of the unsightly fallen tree trunks (one can be seen in the background here but it is nicely faded) and branches one most certainly would find in an Irish ancient woodland.
This is a path I have captured many times with those beautiful garlic wildflowers leading the way, yet never quite as nicely as this one time with the fog.
Throughout the time I have spent in the woods, I have learnt those valuable lessons that should help you as you are getting started. Conditions that morning were a great help, but you can still follow those rules any time of the year:
- Compose to please the eye - avoid clutter and distraction, find some leading lines. It's not easy in woodland, you will need some practice. Look for the meandering edge of a flower patch, the leading line of a fallen tree trunk, the welcome addition of a light beam leading the eye away from a not so perfect foreground.
- Be mindful of the overall balance. Try to not include too many trees in the background. If it can't be helped and the branch 'arrangement' is too erratic, try to include more foreground by lowering the camera or zooming in.
- Don't go too wide! Aside of very few expensive exceptions, ultra wide angle lenses tend to distort corners, something that is really no ideal in woodland. Prefer a wide angle (24-70mm) or a telephoto (70-200mm) instead. A wide angle will give you less distortion whereas a telephoto will compress perspective which is great for close up details or those long avenues you need to fit into the shot.
- Avoid over processing! I see far too many oversaturated or overly soft woodland images. -If anything, reduce saturation so green doesn't take over, leave clarity alone if you can't help yourself with overdoing it, and remove only a nudge of 'dehaze' to accentuate the fog, but only if you need to!
I will end this story with this photograph. On walking away from the scent of garlic and back to the car, I noticed this branch with young leaves almost perfectly balanced between two ivy covered tree trunks. Then, fading away into the background, an enchanting world bathed in diffused light, 'shrouded in mystery'.
Well, not quite, objectively, but this is certainly how I would like to remember this moment! This is also one of the magical aspect of photography. Transpose the moment into another dimension, powered by your imagination.
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