Oak Alley at Wormsloe Historic Site

Have you seen photos of those amazing southern roads with an arch of fern covered trees and spanish moss over them? I’ve been seeing photos like that for years and finally had a chance to photograph an Oak Alley on my recent trip to Georgia. One of my first stops on the trip was at Wormsloe Historic Site in Savannah, Georgia.

One of the first photos I took that morning is the one above – it’s the classic tourist photo of an Oak Alley. And once I had taken the traditional photo – I was able to start taking photos of what caught my eye as I tried to show something a little different for my photos of the Oak Alley.

Most photos of Oak Alleys that I see are taken as landscape orientation photos – so I tried some as portrait orientation photo. At least to me – it gave a different sense of what its like to stand beneath all those amazing trees.

After taking photos of the road with the arching trees above, I started doing closer in photos of just the trees or just the overhead branches. Seeing the way the light changed as it came through the trees, ferns and spanish moss was incredible – it was different in every photo I took that morning.

The trees are Southern Live Oak trees (Quercus virginiana) and are the state tree of Georgia. The ferns covering the branches are resurrection ferns (Pleopeltis polypodioides). Spanish Moss (Tillandsia usneoides) hangs down from the trees. Here’s a closer in photo of the ferns on one of the tree branches.

Resurrection Ferns (pleopeltis polypodioides) © 2015 Patty Hankins

As I ended my time photographing the Oak Alley, I returned to a composition similar to the classic one of the landscape orientation photo of an oak alley – but I put the road off center towards the right side of the photo. To me it showed the overhead arch just a little differently than the classic view does.

I’m still trying to decide which is my favorite photo of the Oak Alley – is there one of my photos you like better than the others? If there is – I’d love to hear which one you prefer in the comments below.