Forest light

I always loved the way sun rays, known as crepuscular rays, looked when visible in a photograph but the trick was to get the bright sunlight/rays and the dark shaded trees all exposed correctly at the same time. I know now that in a camera, digital especially, the range of light from the brightest to darkest part of an image is limited to only about 2-3 f-stops before the details in either the highlights or the shadows are lost, so when shooting something like this, you either need to darken the bright parts (like with a graduated neutral density filter) or brighten the dark parts (like with a flash). I didn't have the knowledge or the equipment to do either at the time but after a few attempts with what I could control, I got something close.

I like the way the low-lying plants sort of "ground" the photo at the bottom and I'm glad I strayed from the "rule of thirds" (i.e. placing a horizontal line like the horizon or, in this case the ground, 1/3 of the way into the frame).