MorseBlog

I finally got out to work on my woodland photography. In a previous post I had suggested that wanted to try some woodland photography as there are many nice woodlands nearby. For this trip I decided to head to Holme Fen which is an area of the Fens preserved in some manner as it would have been before they were all drained. Holme Fen caught my eye this last summer on a train journey from Leeds to Huntingdon. Peering out the window I saw a large birch forest. This was interesting as I had not seen such a number of birch trees in the UK. I noted it on the map and kept in mind. I ventured forth this morning on a cool foggy day. It was overcast so it looked to be flat light and getting there early had no real benefit in terms of light. Having only been there once this was as much about exploring and getting the feel of the place. I walked out to a hide on the edge of some shallow lakes. These were full of raucous waterfowl. I discovered what I had missed on my previous visit; the tra...

I have revised this since publishing as I got a nice woodland shot back from the lab this week! 2019 turned out not to be a terribly productive for actual photographs taken. I only took 52 photographs it seems. I spent some extra time in the darkroom and I may have to include that work even though some of those photos were not taken in 2019. It is not quite the end of the year and I might do something before now and then to supercede this list but here it is now. As I did last year I try to limit the list down to 6 photos. There are 9 images here but two shown in different forms. I rank these in reverse order with what I think it is the best last. Dead Cedar at Arches National Park  This is a photo I took in 2013 at Arches National Park in Utah in the USA. I really liked this photo and printed it right away. I have come to not like how dark the print was as it hung in my bathroom in the intervening years.  (Many of my older prints suffer from this. In part due to th...

As I have taken a mysterious (to me not sure why) hiatus in my photography lately I am contemplating how to renew my motivation. The area I live in is not very spectacular as far as landscape photography is concerned. It is relentlessly flat and as a result can seem  dull. This of course is where one should double down on finding beauty and I think of this as the challenge. Recently my wife an I have been hiking in local woodlands, Monk’s Wood and Holme Fen. Holme Fen I ‘discovered’ on a train trip from Leeds. Looking to the east I saw woodland that seemed to consist of all Silver Birch. I resolved to find where this was. A few weeks later we went for a walk there and I found it looked promising. Around this time I received a new issue of OnLandscape  a landscape photography magazine published in Scotland. Delivered as a PDF I always look forward to the next issue. It so happened this issue 193 featured Stephen Segasby , and some of his black and white woodland photogr...

I few weeks ago we visited my brother-in-law and his partner. We always enjoy these visits and as they live near the Peak District and are keen hikers we inevitably hike some area of the Peak. This visit was no exception and they suggested Kinder Scout. The half dozen or so of regular readers will recall I wrote an essay on wilderness and perception of wilderness between t he UK and the USA. Part of that essay recalled the history of access to private land in the UK and Kinder Scout figures prominently in that history. Naturally I was excited to actually go there. We started the walk in Hayfield and walked a route alongside the Kinder reservoir, up to the ridge top, along the ridge and descended after reaching Kinder Scout. My brother-in-law has a passion for language and explained that scout is believed to derive from ' Kyndwr Scu t'  Anglo Saxon for water over the edge. There is a waterfall on the walk which it is supposed is where the name is derived from. It was a perfect...

Introduction I have not used my Intrepid 4x5 camera in quite a while. In my first use I tried our my MPP 6x9 film holder. Film holders of this type allow one to use 120/220 roll film with a large format camera. They are often referred to as ‘international’ or Graflok backs. They come in a number of fixed sizes such as 6x7, 6x8, 6x9, up to 6x12. 6x12 is the upper limit as 12 cm is the same as 5 inches the length of 4x5 film. (There are some more specialised 6x17 as well for the 3:1 aspect ratio. These work with their own ground glass and extend slightly beyond the normal film plane to achieve the greater than 12 cm film length.) MPP 6x9 Film Back These roll film holders usually require the ground glass to be removed owing to the thickness of the film back. This makes for some extra steps that goes like this. 1) Focus and compose on the ground glass (taking into account the smaller film format). 2) remove the ground glass, 3) place film back in place, 4) remove dark slid...