Woodwalton Misty Morning

I was out again last week at Woodwalton Fen in the early morning as there was a forecast of some fog. I wasn’t disappointed as I walked in the pre-dawn darkness. I stopped in the middle of the reserve where a bench is located by a small pond. I sat and sipped coffee and ate my breakfast while I waited for the light to come up. When the light and color saturated I picked up my equipment and walked on. 

I headed down a track I last travelled last summer along a line of oak trees. This lead to a little used trail and I found my first photo. Three interesting shaped trees in the mist. I setup first with my 150mm lens but needed the 90mm lens to capture it. This lens does not get much use. It is difficult to see the image on the ground glass because of the way the light disperses. 

I was using my SINAR Zoom film back exclusively today and had loaded a roll of Fuji Provia 100. My limited experience with shooting in mist in fog has me favoring Fuji Astia and Provia. I find that Fuji Velvia and to some degree Kodak Ektar can create weird color tinges in fog. It seems related to the saturated films. Provia works nicely as it has very clean color separation and represents the cooler blues of fog well.

I shot this as a 6x12 image at 30” and f22 2/3 as I only needed about 4mm of extension between near and far focus points. 

Image Review

Overall I am pleased with the image. The funky tree shapes being in a group of three seems to work. The fog helps emphasize the subject. The focus and exposure are good. I have a little problem with the grasses in the foreground that distracts from the subject and keeps it from being a better image. I like how Provia gives a cool blue in the fog on the edges of the image while the foreground can stay realistic

Three Trees

A little further down the path I found a small scene at the base of a tree. Some pink flowers were blooming  probably because the weather remains so warm. As I composed the shot I realized I lost the glasses I use to look at the ground glass and compose the image. This was very frustrating and I wasted a lot of time tramping back and forth looking for them and not finding them. Realizing all the while the fog would go away at some point. I finally surrendered and made the image. Ironic in the it doesn’t use any of the nice fog either. This image is 6x9 with a 150mm at f22 and 8” exposure.

Image Review

I like this image as an intimate scene. It suffers as some of my images do from the glossy leaf surface. I did try and stop the exposure down a little to compensate for the difficulty the light meter has catching these highlights. In retrospect I should have used a polarizer. 

Base of Tree

Further down the path I ended up on the other side of a canal where I had seen a low sweeping tree many weeks previously. This wasn’t the composition I had in mind at the time but I thought to work on it. I set up a 6x12 image with 150mm lens f22 1/3 at 8”. 

Image Review

This is a good image. The fog separates the tree from the complex background. The film shows slight over-exposure but not enough to have blown highlights. Focus is good. The image conveys the unique form of this tree.

Sweeping Tree

Right next to this there is a large oak that has leaned over so far that the roots pulled the earth up into a mound. There were some nice orange leaves on the lower branches and the sun was breaking through the mist and forest branches. I again made a 6x12 image this time with a 90mm lens to capture the full sweep of the limb. Exposure was f32 at 2”. 

Image Review

This image is good. The focus is a little soft on the moss on the tree trunk in the lower left corner. I find the image works better on a large screen versus a smaller one. The sun shining through the the fog is really nice. 

Leaning Oak

I wandered much further after this. The fog was burning off and I ended up in a meadow I had photographed before. I tried to capture some bushes frosted with wet spider webs and dew dripping off birch limbs. 6x12 f22 at 2”.

Image Review

A really crappy image. Nothing I wanted to capture turned out. Focus and exposure is good but I was unsure what I was trying to covey and it shows.

Webs and Drops

I explored a little more after this. There was some work being done on one of the bridges over one of the canals on the south side of the reserve. As I walked back I said hello to a someone from Natural England heading out to the bridge work and made my way back to the car. The fog had burned off completely. As I drove home I was surprised that the fog was very thick as I to closer to home.