Autumn Approaches
The chestnuts are dying. They are not really dying as I remind myself we are past August and the brown fringed leaves are what they do every year many weeks before the other trees start to show color. The chestnut seems to be in a hurry every summer to shed its canopy as if it is particularly vulnerable to the the seasonal storms. Quickly, quickly the leaves must go. No time for a pretty show of yellows or oranges. No! Directly to brown, off with the leaves, get ready for winter.
So I set out the other day as the weather has been kind and in fact actually hot and pretty humid. I feel the approaching Autumn only with the much shortened daylight on days like this. I wish to get out to the woodlands before fall is upon us, one last time. I haven’t been to Holme Fen in a while so I head out there on this hot early September afternoon. I am not really feeling the photography energy today but want to be there at least to observe and perhaps something will change in me.
It turns out that some of the best days are those with the fewest expectations. I don’t know if this is what an old colleague of mine called ‘The Saltine Effect’. (He underwent surgery and so was not allowed to eat for some time. Finally he was offered a Saltine cracker and he said it tasted like the best meal he had ever eaten.)
I also have some trepidation with the changing seasons. I feel some pressure in the midst of my woodland project to get some really nice images of the color change. I started this project last November when most of the fall color was gone. Now I have expectations of good things though I haven’t shot color in a while. The season can be short and I have missed past ones as I was commuting at the best times and otherwise busy.
I arrived at Holme Fen with hardly anyone there. Some people were leaving, one guy just arrived. I get out my camera bag with my Mamiya 645 Pro and 150mm lens and tripod. I have almost a full roll of HP5+ in the film holder as I took just 2 photos at Archer’s Wood a couple of weeks ago. It was on that visit that I finally implemented a plan to shoot the HP5+ at 800 ASA rather than the box speed of 400. I took this decision for a couple of reasons. First shooting handheld in woodlands can be tricky even at 400 ASA even in the middle of a sunny day.
Pushed Film
The other reason is I have tried this on my 4x5 last winter when even on a tripod the winter light was so meagre and with tight apertures to keep everything in focus. Reciprocity was getting out of hand and when you expose vegetation for minutes an image can be wrecked by an errant breeze even on a dead calm winter morning. So I decided to try pushing the film. I metered and shot a few sheets at 800 ASA and went with a Massive Dev chart entry for HP5+ in HC-110 pushed to 800 ASA. The results were pretty good in 4x5. (I use HC-110 dilution B at 12 minutes at 20 degrees C). The results I sense are a little grainier but on 4x5 hardly noticeable and I find with 6x4.5 it is still acceptable for prints up to say 12x16. I have not done a thorough comparison, these are my casual observations. Everyone has a different feeling about grain being good or not. I find the negatives are very printable in the darkroom which is a good test. Under-exposing and over-developing is a traditional way of getting more contrast. In this case it does not seem detrimental to my purposes. On my todo list is a task to dial in the development time better for film shot this way.
Walking Around
I begin my solo woodlands wandering. I have developed some habits now when shooting this kind of work. Most of the images I strive for are small scenes or vignettes of the woodland I am in. Something that captures uniquely the character of the woodland or a specific area of it. This means it is best suited as a solitary task. I find it completely absorbing to be focused on everything and aware of possibilities all around me. I walk very slowly trying to take everything in; looking in every direction searching for subject near and far. I also find a certain amount of curiosity is critical. What is over the brambles? In the clearing? Down by the ditch? It is a slow contemplative ramble.
On this day I explored the ends of a couple of coverts I have been through before. As I did I had few expectations. Holme Fen is birch forest mostly and can seem homogenous in that regard. It is thick with fern on the forest floor. It has unique small niches however and I have learned to discern these. If one is open to this then there is always some thing new to discover.
My first image was actually along the roadside. What was left of an old dead birch tree.
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| Dead Birch Shell |
I walked the edge of the woods in the beginning. To my left birch forest, to my right a ditch and farmers fields stretching across the flat fen horizon. It is unexplored space for me and boundaries can be where interesting things are found. That transition from one continuum to another.
Here the lacy heads of dead Queen Anne’s Lace silhouetted against the late summer sky over the harvested fields.
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| Queen Anne's Lace over fields |
Things I noted was the ferns were browning back. My earlier visits they were a lush chest-high dense understory. Now in places they had already begun to brown back, already preparing for that drab brown beaten down forest floor I saw when I first visited last year. I am intrigued to see some yellow patches in the birch trees. We have not had anything near a frost yet. I understand more as I observe. A couple of storms blew in across the Atlantic with unseasonably strong winds. Great oak limbs had been smashed off and birches pushed over or more dramatically twisted like a reed and submit, head down into the ground. The wind, not frost, has made some birch boughs yellow, broken and hanging in the tops of the trees. They seem stubbornly determined to stay with their annual cycle and move to yellow before browning and withering. Different from the Chestnuts.
A smooth dead tree propped against a birch caught my attention on the forest margins. I made two images, one in portrait and the other landscape. I composed the portrait version poorly as the birch tree is cropped on the edge of the frame. I was aiming for the 3 vertical elements of background birch, dead tree and foreground birch. More attention to details in the edges and a couple of steps back would have improved things. Still I like the contrast of smooth bare wood and rough bark.
The landscape version works better for me. The branch reaching across the right creates a good dynamic element
When the ditches are not dry they have little water. It has been a dry summer. I find small scenes on the bottom and edge of one ditch. I risk fetishizing ferns here. There are so many and I find their symmetry and delicate shape mesmerizing. If I am not careful that would be all I would shoot some days. Here however are a cluster of irresistible images I found.
My walk leads me to an area I am familiar with from my first visit last year. Very different of course because of the difference in the season. There was not so much of interest now but I went to a clearing and this lead me on to a series of images.
This first one I saw as I emerged into the clearing from the opposite side. A tight grove of thin tall birch not at all like most of the forest here. The strong vertical element caught my attention. Getting my tripod in the right place to keep distracting foreground at bay and maintain the first image I saw was difficult. A move to the left or right too much and the whole vertical element would disappear like a lenticular postcard.
As I wandered around the clearing there are patches of a fairly common moss which I believe is called Bank Haircap Moss - Polytrichum formosum. I like the spiky look of it but haven't found a good context for it. Below is my first real attempt (Sorry more ferns!) and I used the ferns and leaves to break up the regular pattern of the moss. For me they calm the frenetic spikiness of the moss.
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| Bank Haircap Moss |
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