One Late Spring Evening In The Woods
Last week I posted a bunch of photos taken over the weekend in Duxbury Woods. As I think I said at the time, I'd shot the GFX pictures early in the morning and wasn't really in the mood, but I'd returned later that same evening for a walk and found the light to be so much better, but as I was out with company on that occasion and only had the little X-T50 with me, I didn't really take advantage of it.
And so it was that later in the week, one evening after work, I went back into the woods with the GFX kit (GFX100S, 45-100, 20-35 and chunky tripod). The conditions were similar to the previous evening walk (humid, clear blue skies, midges having a whale of a time feasting on the all you can eat buffet I was providing them), but I think I'd left it a little bit too late, probably by about an hour, so the best of the light as I'd seen it previously had gone. However, I did spend more time exploring the less frequented side of the river and found a number of compositions I'd missed previously but was now quite enthusiastic about. By this time, the sun had sunk well below the tree line, so the illumination was mostly just ambient light, which seemed to suit these images particularly well.
Not Quite There
This was a composition I'd seen on the previous walk. The light had been different on that outing and I think I'd got here a bit too late this time around. It's also a touch messy, now that I was carefully assessing the scene rather than just walking by thinking "oh that's nice, I'll come back some time", I couldn't quite get the sight lines I wanted on a number of elements without having something hanging in the way. Still, I quite like the tonality, so I've included it here even if it does lack a bit of focus.
Backlit Branches
Another one that didn't quite work. There's probably too much in this shot, but my various efforts to simplify it down failed as I always ended up with something in the way. Having the partially cut off path on the right is a bit of a fail too and I should probably have swapped to the 20-35 for a wider view.
Fallen
I quite liked this fallen tree. There's a full length version too, but I think this works better. I would have liked more backlit glow in the woods behind it, but it's not bad as it stands.
A Jolly Group
Now this one I'm really happy with. It's rare to find a nice group of trees aesthetically arranged without some sprucy bush sticking its oar in within the frame. They look like a bunch of old friends having a great time. I did quite a bit stalking around this group (working the scene as the Youtube photographers say) before settling on this particular composition.
Quite The Character
I'd say this was the star of that group and it's the tree that first caught my attention and drew me to the group shot above. The soft diffuse light really helps to draw out the jolly character of this tree.
