Forests in Every Season and Light

Paint the layers, not the trees

Beginners often paint a forest as a row of separate trees. Real forests read as layers. Near trunks are dark and sharp. Far trunks fade into the air. Light breaks through the canopy in patches and lands on ferns, moss and fallen wood. The Mossy Forest pack, shot at Routeburn in New Zealand, is a full study of this: 722 forest photos plus the bridge, lake, mountains and birds around it, and 7 handheld videos about 1 minute each. For the smallest layer, Forest Macro Details (51 photos, Russia) covers fresh moss, buds, pine cones, leaves and small spring flowers.

Conifers: pine and redwood

• Pine Tree Forest in Winter and Summer: 204 photos of one forest in British Columbia, Canada, 93 in summer and 111 in winter. Many were taken from a ski lift, which gives a top-down view of the canopy. Photographer David Edwards is a working matte painter.
• Ancient Giant Sequoia Forest: 340 photos deep in an old-growth California redwood forest, with ferns, huge roots, hollow trees, creeks, trails and wooden footbridges.
• Red Woods Rotorua: 341 photos of sequoias more than 100 years old in New Zealand, in sunset light, from walking tracks and raised tree platforms.

Moss forests

Where the air stays wet, moss covers everything and the forest becomes strange. The Enchanted Forest (573 photos, New Zealand) was shot with a 10–14 mm ultra-wide lens, so you see twisted, moss-covered trunks in their full surroundings. The Mossy Bedrock Forest (307 photos, Finland) shows ancient bedrock of the Baltic Shield under many kinds of moss, with flat moss textures included. The Druids Forest (162 photos) is an unusual forest in the Vercors, France, with panoramas.

Light, frost and autumn

The same trees look completely different at another hour or season.

• Canadian Forest in Sunset: 143 photos of a mossy pine forest from golden hour into twilight.
• Frosty Trees: 327 photos of trees under a thin layer of frost in Finland, shot in overcast light with a sharp prime lens.
• Golden Silver Birches: 141 photos of a birch forest turned gold in autumn, also in overcast light.

Fire and recovery

The Burnt and Regrowing Australian Forest was photographed about 2 months after a bushfire. Its 238 photos show black trunks covered in bright new leaves, and ferns spreading across the ash. Fire is a regular part of the life cycle of most Australian forests, so this is a natural state, not only a disaster scene. The Naked Forest (202 photos, Victoria) shows dry eucalyptus forest without leaves.

For tropical forests, see jungle reference photos. For single trees, bark and roots, see tree reference photos.

Frequently asked questions

Which packs work best for animation backgrounds?

Packs with clear depth and soft, even light are easiest to paint from: the overcast Finnish packs, the Sandy Coast Pine Forest from Ukraine and the summer half of the Canadian pine pack. More background-focused packs are on our animation background reference page.

Can I photobash a full forest scene from one pack?

Yes. Large packs like the Mossy Forest give you hundreds of frames from one location, shot with the same cameras, so foreground, middle ground and background match. Our photobashing images page lists more matching sets.

Why is the Goblin Forest pack only 2048 × 1536?

It was shot on an older digital camera, and the product page says so. It is offered for its rare atmosphere: a moss-covered rain forest in Tararua Forest Park, New Zealand. For large prints or close texture work, choose one of the 6000 × 4000 moss packs instead.