Pictures of lots of trees, dark/light

I am posting one picture here so that you can see what I am trying to do and how I'm not yet able to do it. I love this light and I love trees, and I just don't know how to photograph them. This is probably too weird to even post as an experiment in the critique gallery, so I'm posting it here as a general question with this image as an illustration, and maybe other newbies to nature photography can get some help from this, as well. Are there special basic rules for these types of images? Thank you very much for any input. This was taken in the late afternoon/evening, which is when I'd love to be able to take these shots.

This was shot at 1/40, f/8, ISO 200, handheld.

What are you trying to achieve with the image? What is your vision of what you'd like to capture? Is it darker, lighter? From your description, you said you love this light and trees. From that I'm trying to figure out where you'd like the example image to go. Your question about "Are there special basic rules for these types of images?" As Ansel Adams said: "There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs"

Thanks, Keith. What I'm trying to achieve is how beautiful it looks in real life when the sun is shining through the dark trees so that part of them are dark and part of them are light, with the greens and the golds. But on the very top of the trees in the center you see silver/white, which shouldn't be there. Also, is it acceptable to start and stop tall trees anywhere in the frame, or do you need to have either the bottom or the top? And my other question is how does one use the rule of thirds in a forest if the forest itself and not an individual tree is the point of the image? I tried to do it here with tree groupings and light.

I see sky and bright areas in the crown of the trees that seem well exposed and in the lower part of the picture I see trees that seem too dark. If your Intent is to have more uniform exposure, so that the dark areas are as well lit as the upper areas, you can do it using HDR techniques (about which I am no expert) or you can make your picture when the trees are more evenly illuminated.

One of the difficulties of photographing in a forest when there is bright sunlight is that the tonal differences between the shadows and the highlights exceed the capability of the sensor (of film) to record. If you make the photographs when the light is subdued, you can avoid the extreme tonal range. If the light were coming from behind you, it may provide better illumination of the trees, if there are not trees behind you that would cast shadows.

Occasionally you may see a good photograph in a forest situation with bright sunlight, but it is not a particularly easy thing to pull off, and every situation is different

Barbara--what you show is too much light at the top and too dark at the bottom. There are a couple different ways to get a balanced exposure here. One way would be to use a Neutral Density gradient filter when making the exposure. With a dark tint at the top gradually changing to clear at the bottom you would get a darker "sky" and lighten up the dark areas near the bottom. Another option is to make 2 or 3 separate exposures changing your exposure setting in each to give you optimal exposure for the upper, middle, and bottom sections of the scene, then blend these using a program like Photoshop. That would give you the ability to control the exposure for each of the 3 main parts of the image--Larry

You've picked one of the most difficult shooting situations I know, Barbara, but when the challenges can be surmounted the results can be stunning.

My solution is more situational than technical. I like to find an overcast day that's going to allow the early light to skim under the clouds to light the forest. You have to shoot through the first light and into the period of brighter light, bracketing all the while, in order to find the right combo when you can expose for the sunlit highlights while letting the shadows and sky fall back. There's sometimes a very brief period when they're both within the approximate latitude range of your film or sensor, though in exposing for the highlights in RAW, you have the processing latitude to bring up the shadows in the trees and the darker sky a bit to suit your tastes.

Your questions and concerns seem to be strictly technical Barbara and the techniques are managed and learned from one simple thing. Lots of practice, trust me anyone can learn the technical part of photography but keep in mind that alone is not what makes good photography that's not to say it will make a difference in this image, but you will better understand the limitations of how light is captured on to a sensor and only then can you begin to figure out how to overcome those limitations. You are not going to get what you described seeing with your eyes as a photograph, at least with a single exposure, why? Because a camera is not a human eye and will never every see a situation as a human eye does, that is what you have to learn. That is a hard thing to teach in a paragraph here on a photography forum but yet a valid question, we all run in to roadblocks whether we've been shooting for 2 months or 20 years it's only then we are able to identify the issue and start to learn how to overcome it. Time, patience, practice, practice, practice and don't get discouraged.

Barbara - Aside from the technical details, there are some things that don't translate well the way you want them to in a photo. I find that wide views of things with lots of detail seem to need some sort of organizing principle - a thought out composition if you will. In a case like this, what might be easiest is to try to isolate part of the scene that gives some focus to the image with lines, details, and light and dark regions that evoke the whole scene.

Even if you were to perfectly capture the tones here technically, I don't think you'd get the impact you do in real life - part of the real experience is the large view and tall trees and unless you're going to print really big, you won't get that feeling from an image all the time. A good composition will help - perhaps alternating tones, diagonal lines, some point of focus or leading lines, or any of these created by the trees and tones.

And of course, when you look at it in real life, it's easy for your eye to essentially ignore the sky, and focus on the details you enjoy, like back lit leaves. In a photo, though, large brighter areas are always going to seem more distracting - and I think the sky is here to some extent.

Thank you so much for this very, very valuable information.

Here is a different one from the same day, and in this one my focus was on the tree trunks, so that might work better than the tops of trees. I also just lightened the shadows. I wonder if it's okay to have mostly tree trunks and not have much of the tops of the trees and also whether this one works any better light-wise.

I wonder if it's okay to have mostly tree trunks and not have much of the tops of the trees

That's really up to you: the photographer decides what the subject is and how to present it. This is at the core of defining your personal style.