Holme Fen: Fall Color, photographing with a dog

I took Mollie to Holme Fen again this last week. She enjoys these woods especially much and I go there now for her preference as much as mine. She sprints down the trails and takes in the heady scents of this moist woodland. It seems to bring her more energy. 

We were following some fainter trails grown over in some areas with now-brown bracken. She is a short rather sausagy terrier mix so her short legs present a challenge in thick undergrowth. She adapts however and tunnels under where she can but has also innovated a spy-hop where she jumps over the bracken. She leaps over a section with her body nearly vertical and this raises her head and she surveys where to jump next. In this way she can follow the trails deer have left with a series of these spy-hops. As her confidence has grown she enjoys jumping on the springy matted bracken as she romps about the forest. 

We carried on down one of these trails for a while not really finding anything photographic. I had my Intrepid 4x5 mounted on the tripod, legs extended, slung over my shoulder. I do this to shorten setup time and to reduce the resistance to photographing subjects that comes from thinking of the trouble of setting the while contraption up. 

After a time we stopped under a great spread of oak branches for breakfast. Mollie never eats though I always bring something for her. She seems to prefer being in the midst of the woods with her senses fizzing. I have some coffee and porridge. After some time snooping around Mollie sits with me and just watches and listens. Soon she picks up some noise in the brush and alerts me to it. We sit quietly and watch where the sound is coming from and soon we can see some small water deer jumping down a deer trail about 50 feet from us. Mollie is fascinated but also unsure enough not to give chase. I count at least six as they make their way past our sight. 

Soon they are gone. Then we hear the bark of a dog and I assume other dog walkers are about; then another bark sounds and I realize these are the water deer we had just watched. Soon the forest is full of their full throated barks that all sound to the north and east of us from different locations.  Mollie huddles closer to me and gives worried looks in my direction. She is a pretty brave and robust dog but she does not like dog barks and these have her spooked. I soothe her and she calms down and eventually the barks subside.

I introduce her to the idea of walking on fallen logs by hoisting her up to the one I am seated upon. She likes a higher perspective and occasionally troubles me for a lift up to look around and sniff while I am setting up my camera. Here on the log is no different. I also encourage her up a slanted tree trunk.  

I stand with my coffee and wander around looking for compositions. Nothing is noticeable this morning. Sometimes you just don't feel it, the conditions are not right (gray flat light this morning), or there is nothing worth it. Certainly as my meagre experience builds I get pickier. I know what works and what doesn't and keeping visual complexity down in wood lands is especially tricky. 

I finally see a framing of one of these great oaks near us. It is set off by two vertical birch and a slanted one and makes me think of runes. I am not sure how it will pan out. I meter and shoot it for Fuji Astia slide film and some Portra 160 color negative film. 

Runic Birch
(210mm f32 Fuji Astia ISO 100 2 stop GND)

Runic Birch
(210mm f32
Kodak Portra 160 ISO 100
2 stop GND)

The Portra shows better detail in the sky as one would expect however I am partial to the colors on the Astia version. With so much sky the 2 stop GND helped recover some detail in the Astia sky. 

Next we loaded up the pack and continue down the trail. Most of the birch have had their leaves blown out during the windy earlier part of the fall and so it was not as good as last year. I did find a couple of small birch however. A long bent branch form one gave some balance so based on this compositional mechanism I decided for a photo. I took one in color Fuji Astia and another in black and white on Ilford HP5+. The black and white image is part of my re-evaluation of how I develop HP5+ which I cover in more detail here... 

Twin Birch
(210mm f32
Fuji Astia ISO 100
2 stop GND)

I really like this color image. It has a painterly quality to it. There is enough yellow in the leaves in the foreground to help with separation of the background. The foreground tree trunks also have a warmer white tone on the trunks compared to the tree trunks in the forest behind which are much cooler. I am not sure how that happened but it is special. I also was successful in hiding a small black stump behind one of the trees. 

I again used a 2 stop GND filter to cut the light from the sky out. I can see the limits of the filter in this example as the shadows in the foreground tree tops are quite dark. Still it works and I am probably the only one who notices. It helps to keep the lower third of the image highlighted which is part of that painterly appeal I think. 

Twin Birch
(210mm f32
 Ilford HP5+ ISO 200
2 stop GND)

The black and white image is also very effective. Silver birch are a natural subject for black and white. 

At this point Mollie and I had been out for over 2 hours and we were angling back to the car. The sun came out and offered up some backlit leaves. I took one more difficult and risky image. Angled upwards the aim was to capture a backlit smattering of leaves with the tree trunk as a balancing element. I took this on Kodak Portra 160 as the dynamic range of light was very high. I had to tilt the front standard quite a bit to keep the tree trunk well focused. 

Backlit Leaves
(210 mm f32
Kodak Portra 160 ISO 100
2 stop GND)

I haven't gotten the hang of inverting the Porta 160 negatives but this is as close as I can get the color. I am not completely convinced the color is correct. The tree trunk dominates the center of the image too much I think. I don't like the composition. The 2 stop GND is too apparent in the top of the image even though I mitigated it in photoshop. There seems to be some glare from the sun enter the bottom of the image. Part of the challenge of this image was shooting not quite into the sun so I tried to arrange for some trees to shade the lens. 

All in all it was a great morning out. One or two good images and with Mollie for company there are always small moments of joy.