Cummacatta Wood
I had a day off on Friday, which I decided to spend exploring the woodland near Grange in the English Lake District.
I had planned to follow a trail that would take me through the woods and up to the summit of Great How, which would have yielded nice views of Derwentwater, the nearby lake, coinciding with sunset perhaps? That would be nice. As it turned out, I was having so much fun exploring and photographing the woods that I completely lost track of time and was still at the bottom of the valley as the sun was going down, leaving no time to get to the top.
The weather was what most people would describe as a nice day, but not really ideal for woodland photography with lots of direct sunlight and very little cloud, although this did improve (or deteriorate, depending on your point of view) as the day progressed. Having said that, I suppose most of the images I'm posting here don't really count as "woodland" photography anyway.
All of these images were shot on a tripod with the Fuji GFX100S and either the 32-64 or 100-200 (see EXIF for details). Most 32-64 shots were taken through a CPL. They were all processed from single raw files in Capture One Pro 23.
1. Greatend Crag
I had planned to climb to the top of this (it's about 900ft above the starting point, so still something I expect I can manage these days), but in the end I had too much fun photographing the woods and completely ran out of time.
2. Castle Crag
Despite being a relatively tiny fell, surrounded by much higher peaks, Castle Crag remains one of the most distinctive and easily recognisable features of the Borrowdale valley. When I first noticed the light spilling around the right hand side I had the 32-64 on the camera and hastily swapped to the 100-200 for this shot before it had spread too far. It was a bit of a rush, but I think I got away with it.
3. Castle Crag and Friends
After swapping to the 100-200 I rapidly came to the conclusion as the light continued to pour across the valley that it was too restrictive a field of view and quickly swapped back to the 32-64 for this shot including much more of the foreground. This is the middle shot from a bracket sequence and was nearly abandoned. This image was exposed to just about hang onto the highlights in the clouds, resulting in the foreground being really dark. My initial instinct was to adjust it in C1 so that the foreground looked correctly exposed and then deal with highlights. This looked awful and incredibly unnatural, so I hit reset and tried a different tack. The sky and Castle Crag itself was more or less correctly exposed, but could handle a bit of lightening if I pulled back the highlights. This still left the foreground pretty much black, so I gradually built up a number of layers which slightly lightened selected areas until I had something I liked without it looking horribly unnatural. I think it works much better.
4. Grange
Cummacatta Wood is neatly sandwiched between the village of Grange and The Bowderstone, with a decent sized National Trust car park right next door. In this shot a beam of light fleetingly illuminates neighbouring Grange.
5. On The Trail To Nowhere
While exploring the area, I came across numerous lightly worn trails that led away from the main path and off into the ferns. Following one of these led me to this Hawthorn tree bursting out of some jagged rocks. Like the other trails I found, this subtle trail ended at a picturesque location, leading me to wonder had I stumbled across some photographer's regular haunts for shots or workshops? Either that, or the local sheep enjoy a good view as much as the rest of us.
6. Birches
There are many clusters of shapely looking Birch trees dotted around this location and I took lots of shots of them, many turning out to be complete rubbish compositionally or for other reasons. To be honest, I think I was a bit overwhelmed with the sheer number of subjects on tap. Anyway, duds aside, I think this one works reasonably well. I particularly like the vivid carpet of red ferns surrounding it.
7. A Painterly Woodland Scene
The furthest point I walked was a small valley that lay at the foot of Greatend Crag. The views here were very different to those in the earlier part of the walk, much more enclosed, cluttered and chaotic, but there was no direct light meaning more subdued colours and, most importantly, no hotspots, making this just the kind of environment and conditions I'd been hoping to find.
One of the first things to jump out at me was this Silver Birch whose foliage seemed to be somewhat ahead of its neighbours in the race to turn yellow. What I really liked here was the subtle pastel colours and the way they gently transition across the scene. Locations where I could stand were limited, I'm basically stood on what, if scree were Lego, would be the Duplo equivalent. Stacks of large rounded boulders covered by centuries old moss. While reasonably stable, it did make moving around quite treacherous, so this was the best composition I managed to find in the limited time I was at this location.
What the full height downsampled image above doesn't really convey is the painted look it has when scrutinised up close, so I've include a full res centre crop below, that I think is well worth zooming in on. To me it looks like an impressionist painting.
8. Mossy Rocks
Besides the yellowing Birch, what also drew me to this spot was the fantastic moss covered rocks and the larger (also moss covered) ones further down the slope. As this spot is below Greatend Crag, it's reasonable to assume many of these came from the crag, although plenty were likely deposited here as the glaciers receded. I'm not sure this shot works, it's a bit cluttered and messy, but I still like the mossy rocks.
9. Spritely Trees
Deep in the valley below Greatend Crag stood this little group of sprite-like trees. I'm unsure if they're dead or just that they've given up on the idea of leaves relatively prematurely.
10. In The Shadow of Greatend Crag
Looking up to Greatend Crag from the depths of the valley below it.
11. The Onset of Sunset
This scene looked like a golden opportunity (see what I did there?) when I first saw it, with the yellowing leaves taking on a golden hue in the light of the setting sun, but I really struggled to compose it and was rapidly running out of time. I do have some more tightly framed shots of this scene which I think were going in the right direction, but lost other key elements such as the rock at the bottom and ended up less successful than this one. I'd like to return to this location and spend a bit more time trying things out (I could say that for the entire area to be honest, it's just great).
12. Après Sunset
By this point the sun had set with just the last bits of colour still lingering in the sky. None of that coloured light was hitting Borrowdale though as it was thoroughly blocked by the Dale Head to Catbells ridge you can see on the horizon in the picture below. Despite the failing light, these birches caught my eye and I deemed them worth stopping for a moment to set up my camera and take a shot.
13. Castle Crag and a Big Knobbly Rock
We were well into blue hour (well, more grey hour by the look of it) by this time on my return to the Bowderstone car park, but I couldn't help but stop and take this final shot of Castle Crag looming over Borrowdale like, well, a castle. There's also a really interesting rock on the left of the frame that probably deserved more attention than it got.
