A Misty Woodland Walk
Still no sign of snow here in northwest England, but we have had a couple of days of mist, which, for a woodland photographer, has to be a much better deal. The number of times I've been out in the woods and found myself muttering the immortal woods "if only there was a bit of mist" are too numerous to count and, as I'm rarely out and about early in the day, what little morning mist there is around here clearly happens to someone else, so for me, it was a rare treat to have properly socked in conditions, where the mist hung around all day and I could spend a solid few hours exploring Duxbury woods to see what I could find.
I've been having a bit of back trouble just lately, so I've not had the GFX out and about with me for a bit (it's mostly the lenses and the tripod that become burdensome, the camera body is pretty light), but for such rare conditions I made the effort and took the big lunk out for a spin. After three hours of wandering around (and worse, standing around) in the chilly fog it was becoming a bit tiring on my lower back, but as I can park really close to this location, it wasn't a major concern.
The worst thing about actually getting a misty / foggy day, is lack of practice. It's easy to imagine what a particular tree would look like under normal circumstances with a bit more isolation, but when the opportunity arrives, it's actually a lot more difficult to really take advantage of it than I had expected.
All images taken with the Fuji GFX100S mounted on a tripod and equipped with either the 20-35 f/4 or 45-100 f/4. I think a CPL was present in all cases, with an ND8 guesting on a few. All images processed from single raw files in Capture One Pro 23. With these conditions, I didn't even feel the need to bracket any images, although I did let some of the highlights clip slightly on the in camera histogram rather than completely removing the highlight spike, thinking there'd be enough latitude. The shadows were never in danger of clipping.
1. Broken
Not too much to say about this. I think the combination of bright colours and catastrophic failure sucked me in.
2. Leave Me Alone
I've had to crop this down more than I'd like as I couldn't get close enough to this branch with the 45-100. Still there's plenty of detail remaining. I threw an ND8 on top of the CPL for extra smudgy water.
3. Separation
I took two shots of this, one focused on the tree in the background, the other on the foreground leaves. I settled on the latter, although it's the out of focus colours in the background that make this image for me.
4. The Woodland Path
This is the main path following the river Yarrow as it winds its way through the woods. I originally included more of the path in the foreground to capture more of its winding nature, but it was unattractively broken and muddy near the bottom of the frame, so I preferred the final image with it cropped out.
5. The Ancient One
While wandering around the woods, I found an old and seemingly disused path, that lead steeply up a very muddy slope. Many years ago, wooden steps adorned this path, but they've long since rotted away, so it was a case of carefully scrambling up the slippery slope using the tripod as a walking pole. At the top, the path split in two directions, with one following the sharp edge of the steep slope that would very quickly (and painfully) lead back down into the woods if I got too close and put a foot wrong. Fortunately that didn't happen and eventually I came across this massive (for round here anyway) and spectacularly gnarly tree, perched precariously on the edge of the slope. I think it's been here for a while, probably often thinking to itself "I remember when all this were fields...". On a technical note, when taking this I had to back off the CPL a bit, so it didn't completely obliterate the specular highlights that added a bit of modelling to the right hand side of the trunk. Plenty of scope to brighten this image up, but it loses its atmosphere when I do that, so dark and sinister it remains!
6. Fern
Close up details at the foot of the gnarly tree.
7. Rooting Around
Despite being perched in what might be described as an unsafe location, this tree's clearly not taking any chances, laying down a massive root structure that's hopefully anchoring it very securely.
8. A Wider View
I spent quite some time photographing this tree, to the point I started to get cold and had to pop some gloves on, which is always fun when using a camera.
9. Meanwhile, Back Down In The Valley...
A marcescent tree I spotted on my way back down. Pity about the green trunk on the far right, but it was leaning in and too close to get rid of by moving the camera.
10. Take A Bow
I was quite surprised to see a tree that had grown like this deep in the wooded valley. Typically, I've only seen trees like this in exposed, windy locations, so it's a bit of a mystery how it got like this. None of its neighbours are bent like this.
11. A Woodland Pond
Back on the main woodland path and this little pond caught my eye. The ground around it is pretty marshy.
12. The Fallen Trunk
I've photographed this before, but still find it amazing how the main section of the trunk has sheared off and been caught by its own lower body. I wonder how long it's been like that and how long it will remain?
13. The Yarrow
The initial composition I was going for, would have been taking a bit further forward into this image, but I couldn't get the scrubby leafless bush out of the scene and still frame the overhanging branches how I wanted them, so instead I took a few steps back and made it part of the scene. This also had the advantage of effectively lowering the central branches relative to the rising woods in background and not placing them against the sky. The disadvantage was that I was now pretty much embedded in a bush.
14. Riverside Reflections
Another shot of the river. This time with the ND8 thrown on as well as the CPL for good measure.
