Characters Of The Woods
After last week's sunrise chasing, this week was always going to be a bit slow, in fact I've only had one significant walk, a 7.5 mile wander down the canal that wiped me out for the next couple of days and yielded no photographs whatsoever. However, I did venture out into the woods at a half decent time this morning, so the shots featured here are "farm fresh" as it were.
I had planned to take a short wander along the Anglezarke shoreline and then double back and have a further mooch about in the Stronstrey Bank woods. I failed to complete this plan.
As it wasn't going to be a particularly long walk, I decided to take the GFX100S out for a spin as it's not seen much action of late. Along with this I brought the 20-35 (16-28 equiv), 45-100 (36-80 equiv) lenses and a sturdy tripod, a weighty kit worthy of a packhorse.
Things started well, it was a crisp autumn morning and all was fine until I reached my favourite tree in the woods, at which point I realised the GFX100S no longer featured an eye cup. Now this is not the end of the world and they're not particularly expensive to replace, but at this point I've lost so many of the damned things from this particular camera that I'm starting to think of them as consumables. As a result, this triggered a full retrace of steps back to the car, followed by another retrace back into the woods to the point where I'd noticed it was missing. Anyway, after a long winded search of the woodland floor, the thing failed to turn up and I continued without it, but as a result of the time spent looking for this, I didn't have time to visit the Stronstrey Bank woods.
Anyway, here are the highlights from this morning's trip...
This is the view looking over the barbed wire fence on the opposite side of the road from where I parked. It's not accessible from the road so I just set the tripod up straddling the fence. The Stronstrey Bank woods are behind this, so I do wonder if there's a way into here from there that doesn't involve climbing fences. Watch this space.
My favourite tree in the Anglezarke woods. I think this is the first time I've photographed it with the GFX and certainly with a wide angle lens. I did take a few shots from a closer spot with a wider focal length to try and get rid of that intrusive branch in the top left, but (to my eyes) they didn't work as well as this version.
The same tree from a different angle. It was while composing this shot that I noticed the eyecup was AWOL.
This one is a right on the waters edge. There's a good chance its roots will be underwater by this time next week given the way the reservoir is rising.
Another one beside the water, although a little more elevated in this case.
This tree always looks like it's angrily trying to demolish the wall. It seems to be succeeding.
Coming to the end of the path.
This is about as far as I went into the woods, the path gets a bit challenging beyond this point, so I doubled back here. These birches have a very different feel to the rest of the woods, particularly with the sun breaking through the canopy at this point.
As this spot is likely to be underwater in a week or so, I thought I'd get a shot of myself stood there while I still could.
Another one attacking the walls. The tree around here are really not into boundaries.
...and an unrelated bonus pic. I'd just returned home from the shops last Saturday evening and happened to notice the stars shining in the clear sky. On a whim, I checked aurorawatch and saw that we were currently in the throes of a significant electromagnetic storm, so this led to an aurora hunting expedition with a friend. I'm still trying to find decent locations to photograph aurora, but on this occasion decided to try Denham Hill, which is midway between where we both live. It's not a bad location, other than the steep and treacherous path you've got to climb to get to the top of it, which is even more fun in the dark.
Unfortunately, by the time we got to the location, the intensity of the storm had died down a bit and the clouds had built up significantly, so apart from a few glimpses of green glows above the cloudbank, I didn't get any shots particularly worth sharing. I did however get this shot of Winter Hill, just before the torrential rain rolled in and brought the adventure to a close. Nikon Z8 + 14-30 f/4S. On reflection, I should have moved to the other side of that bush on the left, but at the time I could barely see it (lots of shadow and black lifting going on here), so it's something to bear in mind for next time.
