Since my first post Dene and Chapter, where I discussed exploring Castle Eden Dene, I have returned on two more occasions. On my second visit, I enjoyed a lovely walk with my friend Colin down to Gunners Pool Bridge. My idea was to capture the striking red painted bridge and layer it with some autumn leaf compositions. It just wasn’t happening, and things didn’t improve further west at Churchill Bridge.
Part of the problem was that autumn hadn’t quite arrived in all its glory enough to dazzle with its infinite combinations of red, orange and yellow. It was all still a bit green down in the dene. The other problem was me. I had carried over an approach to making exposures for layering and blending from my previous visit. It’s a formula that works well for me, but I somehow expected to come away with something different from the same location using the same approach. Of course, that didn’t happen.
So today, in the dene by 9am to beat the coming storm, I took a single telephoto zoom lens with me and left the phone at home in order to focus on one particular approach. Autumn is certainly in full swing now. It’s a delight to wade through a kaleidoscope of fallen leaves, making that distinctive once-a-year walking sound.
At risk of coming home with a crick in my neck, I spent most of my time pointing the camera into the canopy, deliberately overexposing the camera to capture the precious little light there was in the sky to illuminate the leaves still on the trees. A couple of joggers ran by and three dog walkers in succession stopped to have a chat. It was a very sociable outing! One chap asked if I had seen any roe deer. I had not. Giving my neck some relief I pointed the camera to the leaf strewn ground and made a few ICM exposures lasting several seconds to hopefully use as base layers for multi layered compositions.
I decided not to mess around with in-camera multiple exposures, deciding to tackle that at home in front of the monitor. There would be plenty of indoor time for that when Storm Boleo arrived. On the way out of the dene I picked up a few leaves to scan at home on my rather old flatbed scanner. It isn’t something I have tried before, so that will be interesting, provided the scanner still works!