Foggy Morning at Holme Fen

I almost didn't bother getting out of bed when the alarm sounded at 5:30AM. The weather report indicated clouds and some rain. Not promising and I have been through a lot of film this past week. However I thought there won't be much color left soon as I heaved myself out of bed and walked quietly downstairs. 

I found the cafetiere washed it out and boiled the kettle. Meanwhile I got into my insulted hiking trousers, found the dry pair of boots and some dry socks. Made the coffee and filled the thermos. I stealthily went out the door with my pack, thermos and boots. I placed these in the boot of the car. It feels unseasonably warm. It is very dark with some light through the partings of the clouds. Venus shines brightly through a gap and the waning sliver of moon glows behind some thin clouds. There is a thin fog but not terribly promising. 

I make the drive in silence. I really don't like the radio to break the relative quiet of my mood in the morning. Just the sounds of wind and the machine. There are brief patches of light fog in the low parts of the road. I have surrendered to any idea I will get some useful fog or mist this morning. 

As expected there is nobody there when I arrive, much different than yesterday. There is much more fog in the forest now and this raises my spirits and expectations. I gather my gear and head to the same area I was in yesterday. I don't really have a plan except there were a couple of images I just couldn't make work yesterday, perhaps these become a departure point for something new. This area is a fairly sparse woodland and I thought the fog might help screen background trees and simplify some scenes. 

I walk toward and around the north edge of the covert. Here I look out over farmland and can see the warming glow of the sun rising. As I walk around the eastern edge I can see there will be no direct sun with a bank of blue cloud across the eastern horizon. I walk back into the forest near to where I was yesterday. The mood is better with the fog. I really don't know what I am doing or trying to do. This is my second time out in fog ever with a camera. I just hope my eye will catch something. Trouble is everything looks great this morning. The light is coming up now and color is leaching into the scene. 

I struggle framing and composing a scene. First from one side of a ditch then the other. There is one birch that glows especially golden and I want to figure out how to use this. Finally I make an image. 

Image Review

This image is bland. The birch on the right is the one that mesmerized me. However the image doesn't have any central element and the extra color doesn't do it. Exposure and focus was good.. There is no composition for this image. It shouldn't have been taken. 

Misty Birches 210mm Fuji Astia f16 15"

I walk around the area more and I am back in an area of mixed oak and birch trees. The autumn has made the eye starved for green now. It picks out green amongst the more autumnal colors. The summer tyranny of green has faded now in a manner that begs for some to return. I make two exposures here with the roll film back. 

Image Review

I like these images. The metering worked, in both cases I had a scan I could work with and the two are remarkably similar as a result. Metering for the forest highlights lead to a slightly overexposed transparency, the sky metering result produced more detail I feel. The symmetrical composition with the strong images of trees on either side one dark and green and the right and the other white and yellow adds some balance while the view between them leading the eye deeper into the forest completes the image. A theme on this series of photos is that Velvia has a tendency to produce some wild purple and magenta in the foggy highlights that isn't really there. I think it is picking up some sky blue tone. Astia is tamer and I think Provia might behave better as well. 

Mixed tree mist 210mm 6x12 f16 1/2 8"/11" meter from sky highlights Velvia 50

Mixed tree mist 210mm 6x12 f16 1/2 15"/26" meter from forest highlights Velvia 50

My green-starved eye catches a single green fern amongst the sea of brown bracken. I try two different versions. The first with short depth of field letting the fog filled trees in the background soften in the distance. The other stopped down hard to try and keep it all in focus. 

Image Review

This image really works and conveys what I was looking for. It is difficult to choose between the two however. The first with tight depth of field makes the fern mentally pop into focus. II have since learned more about depth of field and the sweet spot for the lens is more like f16-f22. Even so the spider webs on the fern are still visible and sharp. 

The seconds image also works and as I have learned recently it is probably not possible to have the background fully in focus while the ferns remain sharp. f45 is at the upper limit if diffraction in terms of sharpness yet the spiderwebs are still visible. Never-the-less the less sharp trees are helped by the fog and so appear sharp. Without the fog they would probably appear out of focus. The tight aperture also highlights the confetti of yellow birch leaves on the brown bracken.

 Summer's Remnant Fuji Astia 210mm f11 1/4"

Summer's Remnant Fuji Astia 210mm f45 8"

I walk back towards the car and encounter one woman dog walker with about 5 hounds. Back at the car and there are two more with about a dozen between them. This is industrial-scale dog walking! They have a van with two stories of cages in the back. 

I cross the road into the next covert. The fog seems to be thickening in a nice way. It is at the point one can smell it and feel it in the lungs. This familiar area has a much different feel. I explore off one of the side trails and find some ferns and what I hope is a good sight line. The fog has thickened but is thin above and as the sun gets up higher it becomes bright diffuse white light above the canopy. I try two versions here one with Ektar to try and capture the full range of light. Then with Astia but with the help of the graduated ND filter to knock down the brightest parts of the canopy. 

Image Review

Another pretty successful image. Not much between them, The Ektar (first) image is somewhat less 'foggy'. I am not sure if this is because the ND filter had fogged slightly or not in the second. The filter has a tendency to fog under these conditions.  I had to crop a distracting tree off the right and I am not sure more cropping from the right and bottom wouldn't result in a more balanced image. The idea of the composition was to lead ones eyes to the twin trees in the fog which this does thought a little weakly. Exposures and focus are good. 

Deep Fog Ferns Kodak Ektar 210mm f32  6"

I make another image further on of trees in the fog. I use Velvia 50. The exposure is f32 2/3 4" metered 5" with reciprocity. I had not check the shutter setting and it was on 1 second not T. So I snapped 1 second by mistake and then was forced to change to T and make a 4 second exposure. I do not expect this image to be any good. This unintentional second exposure will likely be obvious on the image. Furthermore this is a sheet of film from a holder that I am not sure has not been exposed already. So this may end up being a triple exposure. I guess I will learn the state of the other piece of film in the film holder once this one comes back. I have improved my marking for exposed and unexposed to prevent this from happening. I took another image with Ektar in case the Velvia version is a disaster.

Image Review

This image is terrible. The yellow tree on the left really stood out in my mind but barely makes an impact, despite all the digital help I throw at it! The Velvia produced some wild colors again in the fog though the Ektar version wasn't much different. The fog was thinning so a lot of blue light was leaking into the fog. I present here only the Velvia version more a record than anything to be proud of. None of my fears while taking these photos came true. 

Trees in Fog Fuji Velvia 50 210mm f32 2/3 5"w/ GND

I am now down to the Velvia in my roll-film holder having run out of sheet film. Fortunately with the Zoom back I can change the image size from photo to photo. I start out with a 6x9 now in portrait. 

Image Review

I love this photo. The tree leans in a nice way I cropped the top down from 6x9 to about 6x8. The birch log in the lower right balance the negative space in the upper left. 

'Slanty' Yellow Birch Fuji Velvia 50 6x9 210mm f16 2/3 1" w/GND

Another this time 6x7 with two versions without GND and with. (I had some trouble with a couple of images in that I did not advance the film after the final of the next two shots. So the second of this pair was double exposed with the following crooked birch image.) 

Image Review

It is too bad the second image didn't come out. This image was underexposed as it was metered to a very bright sky. The GND would have brought the foreground up in exposure 2 stops allowing the slanted tree trunks to show more detail. (I think I make too much in foggy scenes of keeping the foggy sky highlights in the exposure range. They tend to lack detail and so wouldn't suffer from being completely white. Trouble is knowing how much distant detail would get lost.) Still the image works composition-wise. The lone yellow tree. Somehow (I think with front standard rise) the image gives the impression of looking down a hill into  a shallow ravine. I assure you this area is flat. 

Tree with Slants Fuji Velvia 50 6x7 210mm f45 1" no GND

I catch some birch in the distance between the trees. When I setup it was illuminated with some direct diffuse sun. Most had gone away by the time I took the photo. 

Image Review

I don't know what to make of this image. I like it but the silver birch in the distance are out of focus the result of keeping the foreground birch in focus. I might have stopped down more to help. Again though the lack of background focus is mitigated by the softening of the fog. I should re-process this image to remove the hot-spot on the tree trunk on the right. The composition gets what I am after of framing the distant color. I remain ambivalent. 

Birch View Fuji Velvia 50 6x6 210mm f22 2/3 2" w/GND

Finally two images of a dead tree and some silver birch. I took a 6x12 then a 6x4.5 to finish the roll of film.

Image Review

I like this image though it is hard to say why. The 6x12 format I like as it just lays out the subject almost forensically. Here that subject is the dead tree. Around it all the context of the forest. The image is somewhat unbalanced and yet is simple and represents the subject honestly. 

The 6x4.5 version is just filler. A simple crop. 

Dead Tree Fuji Velvia 50 6x12 210mm f32 2/3 8"/11" no GND

Dead Tree Fuji Velvia 50 6x4.5 210mm f32 2/3 8"/11" no GND

On my way returning to the car I encounter a woman photographer. I confess to not having shot in fog much before. She has been here often and says that these woods are magical in the fog and mist. I cannot argue with here. I leave her to enjoy the rest of the morning.