The weather here in the UK has been horrendous this past few weeks. We have been spared here from the awful flooding but the wind and wet has been epic. Consequently I have not been able to get out until today to take any photographs. I have been shooting large format lately and wind is anathema to this with long exposures and the possibility of the camera getting knocked over.
I went to a new section of Holme Fen this morning and arrived shortly before sunrise. I learned these areas are call coverts. A definition I did not know was the noun form of the word 'a thicket in which game can hide'. It makes sense in a wonderful way.
The sunrise was lovely and I really did not have a plan to use the light. I was just having a look around (a recce in the UK) and would see what happened. The sun rose under the clouds and shown through the trees as I walked towards the east and the edge of the birch forest. This may be something to work on at some other time....
I did manage as few photos but mostly enjoyed being out and having the place virtually to myself it being a weekday. I brought another roll of hand rolled 35mm in 120 backing paper to use in my SINAR 6x12 film back. (A subject of previous posts
here and
here.) I have a project to capture the extreme flatness of the fens and on the edge of the forest began the farmland.I photographed it with the extreme 5:1 panorama format. These I shot at ASA 50 on Ferrania P30 Alpha. This is some film I bought as part of their Kickstarter. It is kind of a throw-away film for me. I really don't know how to expose and develop it very well and this time it showed again. The images were very high contrast. I managed to recover the scans somewhat with ColorPerfect. I will be switching to 35mm Ilford FP4+ in the future. I have a bulk roll so the cost will be negligible.
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35mm in 6x12 film back on Intrepid MkIII with 150mm lens. (note smokestacks on the right)
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| 35mm in 6x12 film back on Intrepid MkIII with 90mm lens. |
I like these compositions. I chose to center the farm (a kind of tribute to
Nick Carver who favors shooting buildings unconventionally centered almost like technical documentation work.) It works well that the planted rows run right down the center as well. I will be back to re-shoot these and hopefully get better negatives.
I walked off piste into the forest. The forest is not all birch trees though nearly so. This covert opens up a lot more and has an almost park-like feel. On this edge there are a few large oak trees and some are truly magnificent. I found one recently blown over, its upright root ball wrenching a hole and a small pond where it once stood.
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| 35mm in 6x12 film back on Intrepid MkIII with 150mm lens. |
I had a problem again with my unfamiliarity with the Ferrania P30. I was metering this at 8 seconds exposure and I had no reciprocity data for this film. So I shot it at 8 seconds and using the Ilford FP4+ reciprocity from the reciprocity app I use which said 21 seconds. 21 seconds was very over exposed.
After a satisfying walk I found my way back to the road and headed towards the car. I halted when the sun briefly appeared from the clouds and lit up the tassels of the reeds in the ditch off the road. This captivated me and so I decided to try and capture this. At first I didn't think I could do this as there was quite a breeze by now and the tassels constantly in motion. I then recalled I had Ilford HP5+ 400 speed film. Metering this though and the shutter speed was still marginal. I had some success last time pushing HP5+ to 800 so I opted to shoot it at 800. I ended up with two shots one f22 at 1/30th and the other at f32 at 1/30th. Depth of field looked challenging. This and the wind really drives the need for speed. The result was disappointing though for the wrong reason. Light leaks! Yikes! I puzzled this out in
this post. Here is one result for the record.
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| Light leaks... |
These shots took a long time. Although it was breezy the breeze was intermittent. It was also cloudy and I needed the clouds to part to get the strong backlight. I metered for the tassels and let the sky blow-out if needed as it was a couple of stops brighter. I was also trying to keep the tree trunks well exposed. I probably had to wait 20-30 minutes to find the best combination of wind and sunlight. I was also conscious of glare from the direct sun and probably would have done better to have the lens in the shade of one of the trees.
I also added a really slow version in Kodak Ektar. I shot this at box speed 100 and set a 4 second shutter speed at f64. Here I was just going to embrace the motion. I have sent this off to be processed and I will update here when I am done. (Light leaks ruined this one as well.)
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Kodak Ektar 100 version with light leaks.
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I finished the day by checking out Monk's Wood which I haven't visited for quite some time. It is very muddy in the winter and it was as bad as I have ever seen it. Not pleasant but no people and still a lovely bit of woodland.
The days are getting noticeably longer and small buds are showing, the Hawthorne is in bloom, Snow Drops have been out for a couple of weeks as have the Daffodils, Cherry and Magnolia are in bloom in town. Spring is upon the land and I need to capture this magic season of the woodlands before it descends into the summer tyranny of green.
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