A Return To Great Mell Fell
Last Sunday, with the forecasts promising "fog" for most of the day, I packed my gear and braced myself for the 80 mile drive North along the M6 to Great Mell Fell for some moody woodland photography.
Upon arrival it quickly became apparent that the forecast was off, way off! I wasn't going to get my fix of misty woodlands after all. Of course, this didn't stop me trying and I still spent three enjoyable hours exploring the woods and photographing anything that didn't move, before finally heading up to the summit (the hike was 5:22 in total, covering a mere 3.6 miles which felt like 20 miles by the end of it). Despite being a modestly sized fell, I still feel like I've hardly explored it at all, so there are definitely plenty of reasons to return and explore it further.
All images were taken with the Fujifilm GFX100S and 32-64 f/4.0. I was also carrying the 1KG lump that is the 100-200, but ended up mostly using the 32-64 and didn't really care for any of the images I shot with the 100-200 when I started going through them. The woodland images were shot on a tripod, while the open area shots are a mix of tripod and hand held and I think everything here was shot with a CPL on it adjusted to reduce as much reflection as possible.
All images were processed from single raw files in Capture One Pro 23. Typically I'll avoid Fuji's film sims, writing them off as a gimmick, but on this occasion I felt some of them suited the rugged environment, particularly Eterna Bleach Bypass, which is something I never thought I'd find a use for as it's quite unnatural, but in these instances I think it worked.
All non 4:3 crops were added during editing, but the 65:24 wide crops were framed for this aspect using in camera crops. It would be nice if Capture One respected this when importing raw files, but it's not the end of the world adding them back in during editing.
Into The Woods
A short way along the path I encountered this rather nice beech tree, still sporting a healthy canopy of leaves.
There had been persistent heavy rain in the days leading up to this hike and conditions under foot were awful (I slipped and fell on my way back down, getting covered in mud in the process, but don't worry, my camera equipment was unharmed), as a result I spotted a vague trail away from the main path that looked a lot less treacherous, so I followed it to see where it went. After following the trail for a short distance it petered out, but I realised I was heading towards Routing Gill and decided to press on through the bracken and ferns, eventually arriving at the beck to find this splendid oak, precariously perched above the beck beside a little waterfall.
Unfortunately, by this point the sun had emerged from the clouds and was refusing to dip back into them, so everything was dappled with contrasty patches of light. The waterfall is just out of shot on the left and I did carefully make my way round to the other side of the oak to shoot it, but it too was ruined by contrasty patches of light, which is a shame as it was a nice scene otherwise. It's certainly a location to return to when the conditions are more suitable.
The same oak taken from a more precarious spot, part way down the embankment.
The intent here was to frame the distant tree on the right in the gap through the foliage of the oak in the foreground. It didn't quite pan out, because the branches were moving a little in the breeze, but I do quite like the colours.
A spritely looking oak I encountered as I slowly made my way back towards the path.
This is one of those shots where I really like the tone of it. With the wiry branches almost silhouetted against the bright, leafy canopy, contrasting against the strong but muted colours of the dead ferns in shade at the bottom.
This is probably my favourite amongst these woodland shots. It has a painterly quality, at least, to my eyes it does.
This tree has a menacing presence. Almost like some kind of gatekeeper. That said, it didn't try to stop me as I made my way beneath its branches, so maybe I misjudged it?
These three trees (along with a fourth less photogenic one off to the right) formed one side of a circle surrounding a small open space.
Out In The Open
After fighting my way through the jungle ferns, I eventually reached the relative safety of the main path and continued my slog up towards the summit. I stopped a couple of times and turned to enjoy the view. This is looking more or less due South towards Patterdale, with Ullswater lurking unseen from here at the bottom of those distance peaks. This is one of those shots that I felt looked better with the Eterna Bleach Bypass film simulation, largely because the hazy colours were muddy and the contrast was weak, so although this film sim looks kind of unnatural, I think it's more pleasing in this instance than the standard Provia sim that Fuji cameras use as by default.
As you get higher up Great Mell Fell, you begin to encounter rows of dead trees, all bent backwards to some extent or other by the high winds that regularly batter this location (some are bent double!).
The row of dead trees line the edge of the woods and, to my (anthropomorphing?) eye at least, seemed to be lined up enjoying the view.
In an environment like this, what do you do with a large featureless expanse at the bottom of your frame? Well, in this instance I decided to crop it out while in the field by choosing the 65:24 ratio that these cameras have. I'd probably avoid using such a crop on my other cameras and instead do a stitched pano to get a similar image, but with the GFX100S this is still a 48MP image, so it's not really much of a compromise.
After once again wandering off the main path, I encountered this solitary Scot's Pine quietly enjoying the view looking off to the West. Once again, this is another image that seemed to work well with Eterna Bleach Bypass.
A lone Scot's Pine waves to its distant chums at the edge of the woods.
A bit of a face off between the live and dead trees near the summit of Great Mell Fell.
