Holme Fen Nov 15 Notes
This particular morning was overcast but as Mollie and I drove to Holme Fen there was a light mist in the air and some hope of heavier mist. I headed to a covert I had been to many time before as the forest is more open there. Part of the frustration of woodland photography is how crowded the scene is and the difficulty keeping distracting features like branches and weeds out of the scene. Also the reduction of visual complexity so crucial to a good photo is made more complicated with a jumbled and crowded scene.
Most of the bracken has now browned in this area of the forest. The silver birch leaves are mostly blown out form some gales that blew through about a month ago. Now however the oaks are getting a nice orange/brown palette.
Here in the UK we are having a long period of fall cover, probably one of the longest in a long time. Listening to the radio I had confirmed what I suspected last year and disabused of another notion. The leaves turn color mostly as a result of shortening day length. The crucial threshold is around 11 hours in general though temperature plays a minor role. I suspected this last years as frost was very late and yet the trees still changed color. Frost is primarily responsible for the leaves dropping as is wind and rain with their more obvious mechanical action. I had thought this fall was going to be poor this years as it started with lots of windy days and these winds did indeed strip the tops of the silver birch and most of the ash leaves even as they were green.
After a short walk I found a small oak and it was framed by some silver birch. I struggled however with getting the elements in the scene while keeping nearby distracting branches out. I started out with a 150mm lens then opted to try the 90mm and move closer. The idea being that I could move much closer and get those overhanging branches behind me and out of view. The lens drew me very close and onto some fissured and unstable ground.
I don't seem to get along with my 90mm f5.6 lens so it does not get much use. The light falls off the edges quite a bit on the ground glass and so my focusing is not very confident. It is heavy and probably has way too much coverage for my needs. I think there are smaller lenses in the same spec with less but adequate coverage. I also lack an adapter for my GND filter holder.
 |
| Holme Fen Oak with Birch (Fuji Astia, 90mm lens, f32, 2 sec) |
I eventually managed to compose my image on Fuji Astia and metered it to f32 at 2 seconds. We shall see.
Overall I am pleased with this image. The composition is close to what I originally imagined and the focus is sharp across the image. The light mist/fog in the air helps separate the background elements.
When I went to pack up my backpack I discovered it was covered with these small stink bugs, hundreds of them. I encountered these for the first time a couple of weeks ago when I must have stepped in a nest of them, the smell followed me the rest of the morning and when I got in the car some were flying about the inside. I shook as many of as I could and marched on.
I found a grand oak in one corner and made a tree portrait, again with the 90mm lens. There was a lot of sky so I opted for Portra 160 at f32 with no GND. These tree portraits always seem to be a better idea than image but I guess I keep hoping for a better result.
 |
| Grand Oak Portrait (Kodak Ektar, 90mm lens, f45, 1 sec) |
This is pretty pleasing. I would make a final crop to eliminate the silver birch fronds on the left and right of the image I think. Ektar was good at allowing me to keep some faint texture and color in the sky.
Mollie and I then followed a small trail through the bracken. Mollie was up to her now better-honed spy-hopping to navigate the twists in the trail. Leaping up and looking to see where to leap next. Such joy as she springs up from the bracken and makes here way deeper in to the woods. We were headed to some more open areas with more great oaks. Here in the fens the oaks lean and fall over in the soft peaty soil. I managed to find a couple of subjects where trees had fallen but were still alive bringing their gilded foliage closer to me and the camera lens. I switched to the 150mm lens.
Here, as usual, when I setup the camera Mollie explores the area on her own or sits and listens to the sounds of the forest. This time she also explored up the sides of leaning oak tree like I showed here on our last visit to Holme Fen. She is a bright little dog and so picks up things quickly. Since she is so short she readily takes to anything that helps her get a better vantage point.
 |
| Fallen Oak 1 (Fuji Astia 150mm, 2 stop GND, f32) |
This image is a bit too complicated. The serpentine trunk lying on the ground on the right is lost in the corner of this composition. I metered two versions one at f32 and then f22. I wanted to try one stop overexposed to see what happened to the Astia which sometimes looks a little underexposed. I normally place the highlights in zone VII so I added an exposure with the highlights in zone VIII. The 2 stop GND helped keep the highlights in the sky under control. The shadows were around 8 Ev and foliage around 10 Ev with sky at 14 Ev (-2 (12 Ev) with GND). The photo above is from the conventional exposure. The one stop over exposure did bring up shadow detail but the sky lost color and detail as is was mostly blown out.
After this first tree we moved on a little further and found another subject from a fallen tree. I setup for this and then took a break to entertain Mollie. I hoisted her up on the trunk and she explored the length of the tree trunk before finally getting down again. I returned to the camera, composed, focused, and metered the scene. After I loaded the film holder and pulled the dark slide I saw that Mollie was on the top of the log right in the photo!
I tried to coax her down but she wasn't listening. I realized I should try and photograph her but the Kodak Ektachrome I had loaded was ready for a 4 second shutter speed at f32 and she would never hold still that long. I remembered I had some Ilford HP5+ if I used that and shot more wide open I might have a chance. I replaced the dark slide and loaded that HP 5+ film holder. Metered for ISO 400 and set the aperture for f11 with a 1/16 shutter speed.
Alas once I was ready Mollie left for more interesting endeavors. I snapped the photo anyway and went back to color film.
 |
| Ilford HP5+ f11 1/16th 150mm 2 stop GND |
 |
| Kodak Ektachrome ISO 100 150mm 2 stop GND f32 |
Monk's Wood Addendum
The previous week Mollie and I went for an afternoon walk in Monk's Wood. The dry Fall has made walking here in mid-November more of a pleasure than the usual chore of slogging down muddy trails. We spent a good number of hours out scouting for images (at least I was, she was scouting for squirrels mostly). There was lots of lovely color about and the field maples, aspen, and oak were luminous in the warm afternoon sunlight.
Alas it was difficult to find much to photograph as the woods are quite dense in most places and a lot of the color was high in the canopy or otherwise difficult to convey in a 2 dimensional image. I settled finally for this cliched image down the trail. I chose Kodak Portra 160 for a wider dynamic range. I managed to underexpose the tree trunks more than I wished but the effect was still what I wanted; the dark trunks adding structure to the luminous leaves that were backlit by the low late afternoon sun. Being on the edge of the wood with little shelter, I had to wait quite a while for the wind to abate long enough for my f32 4 second exposure. The sun began to set as we got back to the car.
 |
| Monk's Wood Path (Kodak Portra 160, 150mm, 2 stop GND, f32, 2 seconds) |
The image came out nicely and conveys much of what the day felt like that afternoon.
Comments