The results of a Grand Day Out (1&2)

So I wrote about my grand day out in the my previous blog post.  I quickly dropped my 9 rolls of film off at Harrison Cameras in Sheffield, so that I could get them back the next day.  I have to say that I wasn’t that impressed to be honest, the sky was blown out in a lot of the shots (I haven’t got round to working out the use of filters when using film).

You’d never guess that I was using Velvia 50 to shoot these (especially the last one!)

I wasn’t satisfied with most of what I shot, despite my enjoyment of the day and thinking that I was getting great shots.  I did however crack the problem of getting lines on my shots.  Call it “user error”.  It was me cranking the film on whilst the camera was still exposing – I am an idiot.  I’ve never had a truly manual camera before, so I was getting trigger happy winding the film before the shot had finished exposing. But at least I know  what the problem now – though I still catch myself doing it!

I went back to Padley Gorge on the Saturday, half expecting to find it mobbed with photographers given the spectacular show that Nature was putting on.  However, it was heavily over cast and threatening rain and this may have deterred some souls.  I had the place to myself which was quite nice.

I went back and revisited some locations that I had tried on the Tuesday with the intention to slow things down, and perhaps take some notes as to what I was doing with each shot.  With digital its easy, you just look at the EXIF information and its all there, date, time, ISO, exposure and aperture – a  record for all time of what you did to get the shot.  For manual, its a pencil and leather bound note book  for me that I do my photographic jottings in.

I’m very pleased with the two shots above, taken using Fujifilm Provia 100F, more so that I resisted the urge to set the saturation to “11″, as appears to be common in a lot of landscape shots of autumn.  Indeed I have seen one photographer’s shots of the same place where the bronzed leaves on the floor have been turned red in post production.

As I write this, its safe to say that the with the recent weather that the leaves are now off the trees for another year.  This is the first time that I have consciously “done” Autumn, though I am sure it won’t be my last.  Its one of those things that doing landscape photography has made me more aware of the seasons and what they have to offer, from knowing that  rain one day followed by clear skies overnight will lead to a high likelihood of mist the next day, to where and when the best poppies will appear in May and June.  So its not only my knowledge and appreciation of photography that is growing, its my understanding of nature and the fact I’m slowly getting keyed in to it.

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