Sunset In Rivington
I very nearly had nothing for this week's thread, but an early finish on Friday afternoon, coupled with an unexpectedly nice evening 'hath bringeth'd home the bacon' (to paraphrase my 'A level' pure maths lecturer from many decades ago, who was nothing if not very entertaining).
Anyway, after wrapping up work for the week, I had a full two hours to kill before sunset was expected to happen, giving me the options to;
- quickly get out somewhere local or...
- fall asleep on the couch.
#2 was really tempting, but applying what little resolve I have these days, I managed to drag myself out of the house and off in the direction of the local countryside with the tough decision of where exactly to go? Options included;
- Brinscall woods
- Withnell moor
- White Coppice
- Spen Cob woods
- Anglezarke
- Lever Castle
- Rivington
I didn't really have the energy for the slog up onto the moors from either Brinscall woods or White Coppice, Spen Cob woods has become time consuming to access due to the only road across the moors being closed for six months (thanks for that United Utilities) and I've sort of done Anglezarke to death just lately, so in the end I plumped for Rivington, specifically the terraced gardens, one of the most popular and well known spots around here, but somewhere that seldom pings on my radar when deciding when deciding to head out with the camera.
As for camera options, this was again another cause for indecision. In an ideal world, I'd just grab the GFX100S and be done, but it's heavy when you throw in the lenses and to get any real benefit from it over the Z8 I also need to carry a tripod and I wasn't in the mood for that. So what about the Z8 then? Just that and the 24-70 f/2.8S, great combination, but still, pretty heavy. So in the end I decided to plump for the little X-T50 and my bag of XF primes.
Now, while that camera is really light and tiny, the weight of those XF primes really does add up and I think the total weight of the bag of lenses plus the body is probably very similar to the Nikon + 24-70 f/2.8S, but psychologically at least, it's the smaller lighter option, so that's what I went with.
There are a number of disadvantages with this setup though. Firstly, juggling five prime lenses and a body whenever I want to change focal length is a pain. Secondly, I don't have total flexibility with the number of primes I own (18,23,27,35,56). Thirdly, the filter sizes are all over the place and I don't have any filters to fit any of these lenses, so the images are all vanilla, unpolarised results. That probably helps with disadvantage number four though, that sensor is a noisy little devil once you move away from base ISO, which, after the sun went down is exactly what I had to do, jumping from ISO 125 to the 2nd gain stage at ISO 640.
Yet with all of these issues I still find myself reaching for this camera an awful lot, when I could just save myself a lot of grief and take either of the other two and a single zoom to cover more or less the same range and almost certainly get higher quality images. I dunno, it's weird.
Anyway, the following images were taken with the X-T50 and one of the XF23/1.4, XF27/2.8, XF56/1.2, processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23 (having mangled the EXIF so it thinks it's working with files from the X-T5).
1. Mystical Woods
I'd barely stepped out of the car, when I was presented with this scene (or something quite like it). The sun was low and strongly lighting the foreground trees on the edge of the woods, while behind them, others were lurking in amongst the soft shadows. I think the sharp contrast made the scene so interesting in person, but photographically, those foreground trees were a real issue as they were so bright compared to the more interesting ones behind them. After a lot more manipulation than I care to mention, here's the final image.
2. An English Countryside Scene
This reminds me of some of the historic paintings that seem to be popping up on my social media quite a lot recently. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of the misty fields and woods in the distance against the silhouetted tree and fence, but I was being plagued by the strong sun in the scene and limited by where I could stand, before eventually finding a spot that brought in the elements I liked while sticking the sun squarely behind the trunk of the tree to reduce the glare.
The foreground is a boggy mess of ploughed mud as there seems to be some construction work going on here, but the abject mess of it is conveniently hidden in the shadows. Result.
3. A Track In the Woods
I was working my way up a steep path I'd never previously explored when I took this. There are lots of interesting trees in the surrounding woods, but getting a clear shot at them was tricky. I took this while I stopped to let my heart settle down from the effort of scrambling up the slope (gotta love those beta blockers). Again, I'm seeing elements of painted woodland scenes. It just needs a horse and cart on the track to make it look more timeless.
4. Summer House
This is the 'summer house' that sits below the 'pigeon tower'. The main path is on the opposite side to where I'm stood, so this is the first time I've seen it from this angle. I think it catches light from the setting sun better from here.
5. Rivington Pike
Having reached the altitude of the 'pigeon tower', which marks the top of the gardens, I wasn't really in the mood to put in the extra work to reach the top of the pike, so I settled for this shot from the track beside the 'pigeon tower'. f/1.2 because, why not?
6. The Pigeon Tower
I've always found this thing to be an awkward building to photograph, its surroundings are a bit rough and the light is typically a bit rubbish whenever I've gone up there, but this isn't a bad effort, although I've just spotted a plastic bottle on the floor, but don't have time to clone it out right now.
7. Arch
I don't know about this one, it's got something, I think it's the reflected light on the moist steps and flags that make it somewhat interesting. Good job I don't have a polariser for these lenses otherwise I'd have missed that.
8. The Way Down
This is taken from the roof of one of the summer houses (there's a little viewing platform there) looking down the stepped ornamental path and across Lever Bridge.
9. Zigging and Zagging
The same path from a different angle.
10. Lever Bridge
I've photographed the bridge from the side before, but here it is looking across its span.
11. Surprise Sunset No.1
The sun had disappeared below a thick, mushy cloudbank before I began making my way back down through the woods, so I was quite surprised when the sky started to light up with nice colours. I was also scrambling for a decent vantage point to catch it from. This was taken looking over a bit of an opening in the foreground trees.
12. Surprise Sunset No.2
After taking the previous image, I hurried further back down the path to the boggy point where #2 was taken from. It was really dark by this point, but there was still a nice splodge of colour in the sky, gently tinting the scene below and a light mist was starting to form. Through the viewfinder I couldn't make out any of the details in the field at the bottom and the AF was really struggling to lock onto anything by this time. The foreground has been lifted quite a lot here to recover the detail and is actually quite noisy, although I don't find this unpleasant. There was quite a bit of speckled colour noise here, but I've managed to selectively eliminate most of that while leaving the luminance noise intact. Downsampling to 2K resolution hides a lot of this too, but I think this would still successfully print quite large.
In a way, I would have loved to shoot this with the GFX100S on a tripod, then that foreground could be really clean and detailed, but I don't regret not having to carry that lot up to the top of the hill in the first place and I think this is still a successful image (it's my personal favourite from this set).
13. A Walk In The Dark
By this point, it was really dark and I'd pulled out the headtorch. I'd shot these trees on the way up, but they took on a completely different look stood against the fading colours in the sky.
14. Tree and Gate
I would have preferred this if the branches on the right hand side of the tree fully extended across the gate and I didn't have intrusion from the tree out of shot on the right.
15. Same Tree, Different Framing
Reframed to exclude the gate and feature more of the distant sky.
16. Last Light
One last shot of this lovely, but atypical sunset. Now, to get down this awful, crumbling path in the dark without breaking my ankle...
