Another Autumn Venture

A subsequent visit to Holme Fen yielded a couple of good photos. I am working through my assigned Autumn Ritual to put me in touch with the season for my Woodlands project. 

Again I found myself out before sunrise. A promise of some fog and I headed again to Holme Fen. I am trying to figure out for myself when and where to capture the woodlands when the Autumn color arrives. This means I have dusted off my 4x5 large format camera and loaded the film holders with mostly color film. This in turn means I need to recall the muscle-memory of operating the beast. So I always plan to take a few photos even if the conditions are not promising. All this to make errors early as I relearn the camera for this season. 

On this particular morning there were patches of fog as I descended into the fen lowlands. I disembarked and headed out to the eastern edge of the wood. The fog as I found on the earlier visit did not penetrate the woodland well which means that aspect of the morning wasn't going to yield much. Still perhaps some warm light from the rising sun would garner an image. I still have not learned where to be for satisfactory morning images here but I am determined to learn. 

I found myself actually past the edge of the wood at sunrise. I  thought perhaps the light would look good back at the forest. This didn't seem likely as I got there and so I walked further to see where the fog patches were. Here I sent four muntjac scurrying across the stubbled wheat fields. While I waited for the sun to rise I setup to take a 6x9 black a white photo of a line of trees. Once that was done the sun had risen above the low fog on the horizon and I impulsively swung the camera to capture the orange orb of the sun on the horizon of fog. 

Sunrise over the Fens
(Fuji Velvia 50 with 2 stop ND Grad filter)

After this I slung my tripod and camera over my shoulder and wandered back through the wood. I was contemplating scenes along the way to see if I would find something to photograph. I wasn’t hopeful. The forest has full foliage and does not admit much light inside the margins so I wasn't feeling optimistic. I moved from the sparser section across a ditch near a pond and looked back towards the east. Light was slanting through a break in the trees and illuminating the moisture in the air and backlighting leaves and ferns. I decided to setup as quickly as one can with a large format camera. I wasn’t expecting much as I know this light moves fast as the sun rises. 

I took two images. The first one that I scanned had a patch of mist. It was misty but I didn’t recall quite that much. I also shot it normally metered.  I tried Silverfast scanning SW for the conversion of the Kodak Ektar film. I also used Colorneg with a raw scan and got good results with both. I preferred the version from Colorneg slightly. Here is where I ended on the scan and post processing. 

Morning Forest Light 1
(Kodak Ektar 100)

The next one is my favourite of the three. This one I almost didn’t take. Probably taken a minute or two later the sun is up slightly and whatever the source of the mist it is mostly gone. I also over-exposed it one stop as an experiment to make sure the shadows were well exposed. Again I used a raw scan processed through Colorneg. The Silverfast version ignored the warmer colors and looked like it was taken in the middle of the day. 

Morning Forest Light 2
(Kodak Ektar 100 one stop over-exposed)