A restaurant.

Brinscall Woods, Episode 32,768

Well, I was expecting to post something different this week, I had Friday booked off work, a nice previously unvisited little area of the Lakes lined up to explore and great weather to boot, but life got in the way and that trip ended up not happening, so instead it was back to Brinscall Woods this morning, which I was quite enjoying, but due to a prior engagement, I had to pull out of there after just a couple of hours, so I didn't even get to the bit of the woods I really wanted to photograph. I might try again tomorrow morning, although the way this weekend's been going so far, I might just stay in bed and wait for Monday to happen.

Anyway, during the brief time I was in the woods, I took some quite random stuff that I think is generally a bit different for the usual fare.

1. Hatch Brook - Back to Normal

After last week's flooding, it's nice to see Hatch Brook back down to normal levels and not trying to drown that tree to the left of the river bank.

2. Eerie Drain - Creepy Clown Sold Separately

This is where Hatch Brook disappears into a hole in the ground where it goes to join The Goit, the canal that eventually feeds into the Rivington reservoir chain. I was half expecting to see Tim Curry in full clown regalia on the other side of those bars, but he was a no show, which was a bit of a relief knowing how that TV movie panned out.

3. Forest Fern

Not much to say about this, other than it was quite a nice fern pressed up against a tree trunk. I quite liked the way it stood out against the texture of the trunk.

4. Possible Path

I quite liked the backlight on the distant trees further along this path. The trees here are a bit characterless, so composition proved a bit tricky and think the foreground is a bit messy, but I feel it's got potential, even if it's failing to reach it with this shot.

5. Ghostly Presence

When I was framing up the previous shot, a mother and child came walking along the path and through the viewfinder it looked pretty good with someone in the frame, but I generally try to avoid photographing strangers, so I didn't take the shot, but I did like the idea of putting someone into it, so I had to fall back on the only model I had to hand, me.

I knew it was a long exposure, but I liked the idea of the figure being a bit blurred and featureless, so I kept walking along the path during the exposure to blur the image. I took quite a few shots and this is perhaps the best.

In this particular setup it was actually quite tricky to take as the camera was on the opposite side of a fallen tree, so after pressing the shutter I had to scramble over the tree and practically run down the path to the point I wanted to be at, the walk back, climb over the tree, check the image, curse a bit then rinse and repeat. What I don't like about this, is that I've miscounted the 10 second timer and started to turn round as the shot was taken, giving me a sort of Zaphod Beeblebrox double head (superior highly unrealistic BBC style, not the motion picture variant), which wasn't quite what I was going for. I may try this again in the future.

6. The Holey and The Ivy

Lots of nice elements here, but I'm not sure if this works. The location looks great, but it wasn't quite coming together. Another one for a future revisit.

7. A Frosty Find

I spotted this little collection on the top of a wall as I was leaving the woods, it was still holding a little frost and looked kind of cool. Unfortunately I couldn't get the tripod high enough to focus this, so instead I ended up handholding it while leaning on the tripod, so it's not quite pin sharp, but downsampled to 2K it looks okay. This has had everyone's "favourite" film sim (Eternal Bleach Bypass), to add to the frosty look, but I've really amped the colours up to stop it looking washed out.

8. Beware The Moon!

A local painter (Mike Lord - mikelordart on Instagram, check him out and see if you can recognise the picture) recently asked if he could use one of my pictures as a basis for a painting, which I was very happy for him to do and recently he completed it. I was delighted to discover that he'd chosen to use that painting as the centrepiece for his exhibition at a nearby venue, which was this afternoon, so I went along to meet him and take a look at this and his other paintings, which were very nice. Although I took a camera along (the GFX+45-100, not the obvious "walkaround" camera perhaps), I didn't actually take any pictures of the exhibition (I should really have asked permission, I'm sure it would have been okay and might have been a nice record for Mike), which is all a roundabout story which leads to how I came to take this last picture on my way out of the venue after it had gone dark. There was a mist around the moon and I noticed how it was sat amongst the branches of the some trees in the car park. This is a handheld shot with the 45-100, which is roughly a 35-80mm equivalent, so it's been quite heavily cropped in order to frame it like this (the full res crop is about 10MP), but it's still got a decent amount of detail and atmosphere. Wish I'd brought the 100-200 though.

Really pleased to see you back out in the mountains again. Nice images of lovely countryside. Is this the tree you've been studying for some years?

The fungi are interesting and nicely shot, but this first image is a cracker. Really well observed and executed.

Yes, must try and get back into the mountains. The tree I have photographed is somewhere under the clouds in the far distance.

I like the detail shot (6), even as an online Jpeg, the Fuji seems to bring out a lot of detail. Is the Z7 now in retirement?

Not at all, I took it up to The Lakes a couple of weeks ago as there was going to be a few thousand feet of ascent, so I needed to travel as light as possible so I just took the Z7 with the 24-200. To cover the same range with the Fuji, I'd need to carry about 5KG of camera and lenses (three of them to get me from 25-160mm!), plus a tripod if I was hoping to see any actual image quality benefit from the extra resolution (although I'm pretty steady at handholding, at 102MP even I'm introducing some blur into the image, there would be a visible benefit due to lens quality compared to the 24-200, but I could counter that by taking the 24-70 f/2.8 and 100-400 Z lenses, which would still work out lighter and give more range). So in that sort of scenario, I'll always pick the Nikon as I just would get up those hills with the Fuji kit.

In a woodland scenario though, where there's not a massive hike to get there, I can manage to carry all of this kit, including the tripod and reap the benefits of the larger sensor, it's absolutely brilliant for that, so it's always going to be the first choice there. I haven't ventured up onto the moors with the full kit yet (I did take just the body and 35-70 lens, which is comparable in size and weight to the Z7+24-70 f/4, but with less focal length range and a more underwhelming lens), those are slightly longer walks with a bit more ascent, so I've still picked the Nikon for those so far, but I might give the Fuji a go at some point over Christmas.

Here's #6 in its full resolution if you want to really see the detail.

I do think the GFX would suit the sort of building interior and exterior photography you do very well and they've even got you covered with native T/S lenses now. Are you not tempted?

A restaurant.

"Jonathan, you're bleeding."

This place reminds me of Solutre which I posted pictures of a few weeks ago. This one with the bleached grasses is my favourite.

The band look very serious - then I suppose it's not easy to look cheerful while blowing an instrument 😁
Did you try the doughnuts?

That's a bit nightmarish, but I love the colour palette.

The light in the distant trees is nicer in this shot than the previous one, though I'm not sure your ghostly presence adds 😉

Intriguing shot, certainly some lynchiness in it...

I like these shots, this light and shadows add volume and distance perception.

Industrial

1929 ART DECO Filtration Plant still in use today.

I guess you’re stranger in that town? 😀

The man behind the window looks like an older version of J. Cleese!

David