MorseBlog

Fall continues to be interesting here in Cambridgeshire this year. The field maples are out in force with a vibrant yellow I normally attribute to aspen; though perhaps I am merely starved for color. This year feels different with the distinct sense that the very hot summer has led to some stress in the trees and resulted in earlier and brighter color. The evidence for this is my observation that the first areas to turn are the parts most exposed to the sky and sun. The field maple in particular runs from yellow to orange the closer you get to the edge or crown of the foliage. This orange in fact is mostly dried and dead leaves.  The aspen are showing spottily color now though they tend to develop color much later. Perhaps the most prominent is the rare wild serviceberry tree. One of which I have observed trying to get red in the past but not quite getting there. Now I can identify seven of them just by the color of the leaves which at first seems a bright red but is revealed on closer

I am back in the UK for a while and it is good to be back to see my wife and friends. I took Mollie out today for  long walk in Monk's Wood one of her favorite places. She is going to get spayed tomorrow and I wanted her to have some happy memories before her surgery.  The day was perfect with scattered puffy clouds and a comfortable fall air not hot or cold. I took the camera on a whim as I don't like shooting in the middle of bright sunny days. The camera is my lazy shoot, the digital Fuji GFX 50s ii with the Mamiya 150mm f3.5 lens on a Kipon shift adapter. This is a pretty good setup for intimate landscape. I managed some decent images rather surprisingly. I concentrated on the hints of color mostly in the field maple as they tend to be the first to turn. I also stuck with the open end of the aperture range to strive for some separation with depth of field. The film simulation used is Provia as this gives a nice level of saturation while remaining natural looking.  I like th

Last September I made a couple of posts about using my Fuji G617 panoramic camera for intimate landscapes. Part of this was to try and defeat the summer photography blues. I got some rather good results.  Now I am facing another photography drought and Spring has arrived, and I have never really known what to do with Spring photography. Indeed, Spring and Summer are the worst seasons for me. Fall has color, Winter has forms, and both have frost and fog. Right now, we are at peak bluebell season. I find photographing flowers generally unsatisfying, and bluebells are a bit of a cliche even though they are amazing to walk amongst this time of year. Don't get me wrong they really are spectacular, but I really haven't gotten an image of them that makes me say 'wow'.  And so, I find myself out on a brilliant and cool spring morning that quickly warmed as the sun rose. The bluebells are spectacular right now in Monk's wood and are accompanied by Wood Anemones, Celandines,

We are entering summer now and what I call the 'tyranny of green'. It is never a very productive time for capturing new images for me. I tend to stick with black and white as a result and spend more time in the darkroom as well. Ironic in that when the weather is nicer I find myself in s small darkened room! I have been taking a few photos with my Mamiya 645 after I had some meter problems which I adjusted. I broke my rule about not shooting black and white and color at the same time. I find each requires a different mind set and alternating film backs can be confusing and not very satisfying.  So I accumulated a roll of images on Kodak Portra 400 over the past month plus. I have a parallel roll of black and white I am not quite through the roll however. Despite mostly being snaps without any real intent artistically a few images came out well. I took most of these with my 150mm f3.5 lens sometimes with the 2x teleconverter. One image was with my 80mm f1.9 which is the widest l

Apparently I haven't been in the darkroom since September last year! This is of course when I began to prepare for the fall season of photography. During the fall I probably took in excess of 100 photos most of which were on my large format camera. This has been an incredibly productive in terms of number and quality of my work. It has been helped by having a focus on a subject (woodland photography).  Unfortunately my darkroom work has taken a back seat to fall photographs that went through a long productive period over the summer. I took to making smaller prints with wide margins and even went so far as to fashion simple frames to display them.  Expired Developer and Concentrate This week I returned (slowly at first) to the darkroom and reacquainted myself with that aspect of my work. I had a modest backlog of black and white images from this past summer I had not printed yet. I had the inevitable problems of assessing equipment and chemicals. While I had just mixed a fresh batc