Chatsworth trees

April 8, 2025 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

A quartet of trees I photographed while hiking around the grounds of Chatsworth House a couple of months ago.

I like the first of the four the most as it stands out against the sky and background. The second has a miniature fungal forest to add interest, although the light is pretty contrasty. Not as contrasty as the next shot though, where I deliberately metered for the highlights to throw the shadows into darkness. The final tree caught my attention as it looked like it had an old man’s face in right-hand branch of its trunk, although it’s a little difficult to see in the photo and looks a bit like the face of someone with Proteus Syndrome (the condition that afflicted Joseph Merrick, made famous by the movie The Elephant Man).

Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 for 8 minutes @ 20°

Taken on 25 January 2025

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Tree trunk (not a Christmas tree trunk though)

December 9, 2023 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

After yesterdays picture of a somewhat worse-for-wear tree trunk, here’s an altogether healthier looking example.

We put our Christmas decorations up today. This has been done with some trepidation as we have two kittens in the house, both of whom have never experienced Christmas before and who, no doubt, the experience will be full of new things to cause mischief with.

One of them had her curious little snout into everything while the tree and the rest were put up, the other is seemingly afraid of Christmas and went upstairs to hide (although she has since come back down and tentatively poked at the festive garland above the fireplace, and also stolen a small sprig of artificial spruce from a display and hidden under the kitchen table with it). The tree is still standing for now, although a length of tinsel was found to have mysteriously fallen off earlier this afternoon.

The outdoor lights are getting whipped around in the wind, and a section of them seems to have blown into the guttering. That can wait until tomorrow to be remedied though…

Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE, & Lomography Color Negative 400. Lab developed, home scanned & converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken 11 November 2023.

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Animal damage

December 8, 2023 fishyfisharcade2 Comments

The trunk of this tree looks a little worse for wear. I assume the damage is the result of animal activity – there are lots of sheep and also deer in the area. Plenty of squirrels too, although this amount of impact looks a little severe for those bushy-tailed creatures.

I’m not sure if it’s the result of teeth or horns / antlers, but it caught my eye and I took a picture.

The original is a colour image but it’s one of those frames that, for some reason, Negative Lab Pro had trouble with and the results had a nasty green and purple tint. The conversion to monochrome resulted in a more satisfying image. It’s not the first image that I’ve had these sort of issues with – sometimes I can spot frames that might be problematical – but this was not one of them. Maybe a visit to the NLP forum might help resolve the issue.

Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE, & Fujifilm Pro 160NS – converted to B&W in Lightroom. Lab developed, home scanned.

Taken 11 November 2023.

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Hollow trunk

December 29, 2021 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

Here’s another photo from my foggy morning walk just before Christmas. The tree in today’s photo will likely feature again tomorrow or the day after as also go a long shot of it – I’m still stretching out the posting of images from this roll of film until I get one of my other rolls developed. Thankfully my fresh bottle of DD-X arrived today so I might get one of them sorted out tomorrow.

Yashica Mat 124G & Shanghai GP3. Lab developed in Xtol.

Taken on 18 December 2021

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Sun-dappled monochrome woodland

June 30, 2020 fishyfisharcade2 Comments

Making black and white photographs in woodland, or any other place featuring large areas of green foliage, can sometimes be tricky. Without well defined subject matter I find tht such scenes can become a mass of mushy grey textures. Differing shades of green that are easily discernible to the eye merge into less defined shades of varying brightness.

So I think a clearly defined subject is important, either seperated by brightness, contrast or texture, or isolated in some way, such as it’s placement in the composition, or by using a shallow depth of field to add separation.

I think the photo today uses a bit of both techniques. The trunk that is the point of focus is isolated here by the light that falls on it (or rather doesn’t) – there’re splashes of sunlight, but overall it is darker than the background where more light is falling. I also opened the aperture to throw the tree into focus while leaving everything else softer.

I’m happy with how the shot turned out – I have a number of similar photos from other outings that didn’t work as nicely!

Yashica Mat 124G & Fomapan 100. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8 mins @ 20°.

Taken on 22 June 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Ivy on a tree trunk

December 23, 2019 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

As we approach the end of the year – and decade – I’ve been wondering about a favourite shots of the year post or something along those lines, so I expect that will be the subject of a post in the coming week. I’ve also been pondering some project ideas for the coming year – two of which I’ve already started, although it’s really early days yet and they could fizzle out just as easily as they began, so I’ll wait until there’s something worthwhile developing (pun fully intended) before I make any posts about them.

In terms of new photos, I have a roll of XP2 that shot recently that’s been scanned and I’ll start to upload from, plus a currently unscanned roll of Tmax 400 that I put through the Holga last week. I’ve also shot a roll of HP5+ today, and plan on shooting more film during the fortnight I’m on leave, so there will be a batch of new stuff to see soon, but as the labs I use are now closed for the holidays, I’ll not tbe getting anything developed until the start of the new year now.

For today then, here’s some ivy on a tree trunk that I photographed in Boston Spa last weekend.

Olympus OM-1, Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford HP5+ (pushed to 800asa).

Taken on 15 December 2019