For this photoshoot, I visited St Catharine’s woods in the evening to shoot the natural scenery at golden hour, focusing on both smaller details and the bigger picture within each photograph I took, showing the structures of different plants and aspects of the ecosystem.

After editing through each image, removing the compositions I didn’t like or felt weren’t interesting enough, I was left with a small collection of photographs that I could further adjust.

For this shoot, I wanted to focus on capturing the earthier, more natural tones in my images, and developing on this in the editing, primarily increasing the saturation of the reds and greens.

For this image, I wanted to bring out the natural blue hues of the light reflecting on the stream without taking away from the scenery around it.

I experimented with the tone curves, increasing the output for the blacks, and slightly adjusting both the temperature and red channels until the stream had a nice blue hue to it, and the rest of the composition had a natural-looking warmth.

When colour grading, I wanted to develop further on what I’d already done, using oranges and blues to strengthen the colour palette, adjusting the vibrance as to not oversaturate the image. After, I calibrated the primary colours within the composition, being careful not to overdo it as to make it look unnatural but not leaving the image too dull.

To add the finishing touches, I used the linear gradient tool to increase the strength of the light source within the image, and to further darken the darker sides, to create a better contrast that wasn’t too obvious. Lastly, I added a slight vignette to bring a stronger focus to the centre of the image.