Made me chuckle.

The second made it worth it I'd say.
And that is a fine house in the last.

Me too. But I went with it in the end.

Spen Cob Wood

After my disastrous shoot in the woods last Saturday, when I inadvertently packed the 100-200 rather than the 20-35, well, I say packed, the bag was already packed from earlier in the week and I'd forgotten that the last thing I'd been out shooting was the rapidly fading comet, anyway, after that, Sunday morning turned out to be similarly nice weather, so I headed back into the woods with the appropriate lenses this time and plenty of time to just explore and see what I could find.

All images taken with the Fujifilm GFX100S mounted on a sturdy tripod and equipped with either the 20-35 f/4 or 45-100 f/4 plus a CPL. Processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23.

Take Two

This was a shot that jumped out at me on the preceding Saturday as I made my way down the stupidly steep and muddy path leading into the woods, which quickly led to me realising I'd brought the wrong lenses, but not on this occasion. Although this was taken not more than 10 foot from the path, it was a treacherous spot to reach due to a steep incline and lots of vegetation intent on stabbing me. It's practically a sheer drop beyond the grass at the bottom of the frame, but the little river valley down there looks interesting, so I will attempt to (carefully) investigate it when I'm next up that way. Sadly, I don't think the light was quite as nice as it had been the previous day and it was a struggle to actually get pleasing colours out of this one.

The Lookout

Further down the crazy steep path, I spotted this lone birch on the opposite side. Again it's growing out of a seriously steep incline seemingly made of teflon, making it tricky to get to a good stable position to take a shot without sliding off into the valley. Contrary to the previous image, I really like the colours here.

Intimidation

Like an idiot, I decided to leave the path and strike out across the incline after taking the previous shot, basically being drawn deeper into the woods. It was precarious stuff with the mud hidden beneath the undergrowth and ready to take away my footing at any time. For once, I was actually glad to be carrying the tripod, employing it as a makeshift walking pole / mud axe (like an ice axe, but for mud) and more than once it saved me from a potentially expensive nasty tumble.

After what seemed like an eternity of really slow scrambling, slipping and sliding, I reached this spot and pair of trees.

Down The Valley

Having left the pair of arguing trees, I continued to make my way across the slope, with the slippery soil smearing like blancmange beneath my feet. Pausing briefly (although quite likely slowly sliding down the incline), I took this shot looking down into the valley.

Valley Head

At the head of the valley (or gorge?) runs a little stream, probably more the product of the geography than the cause of it.

Deeper

Following the stream deeper down the valley brought me to this tree. At this point, the stream has widened from something I could easily step over to something a bit more risky to cross. I ended up jumping across it a little further down from here after carefully weighing up whether I'd actually make it or not. I think this shot gives some impression of just how steep it was. This rather grand tree is propping up one of its own branches that's sheared off at some point, embracing it like a dying lover. You get this impression more from the other side and I tried to shoot it, but from over there you're looking up at it, drawing in too much sky, so instead I settled for this shot. Again, I might return and see if there's an angle on it from the other side, but I'm not confident there will be.

Organised Chaos

This is from roughly the same spot, looking back up towards the head of the valley (you can see the stream on the bottom left). It's a tiny little valley, barely more than a few contours on the OS map, but what it lacks in absolute dimensions, it makes up for in variety and steepness.

Turkey Tail

As I exited the valley and returned to the main path, I spotted these rather nice examples of Turkey Tail fungi growing on a pair of fallen branches. Unusually for me, this photo is unedited, just exported as is from the raw file in C1P. Normally my images are deliberately underexposed to preserve highlights, but I guess that's not an issue when you're pointing at the forest floor.

Saved From The Bin

This is an unusual one. I edited most of the above photos earlier in the week, but when reviewing the images I'd picked as having potential but hadn't felt motivated to do anything with this morning, I came across this. When I originally took this, there was a distracting tree off to the right that I couldn't seem to satisfactorily get out of shot without losing something else I wanted to retain. But having done a quick pass this morning to pull the colours out I decided to have a play around with crops and ended up with this which is possibly my favourite image from this particular expedition, which kind of makes me glad that I keep all the images I take, rather than just the ones I like as you never know when you're going to change your mind about one. Admittedly this does mean I've got several terrabytes of images no one will ever see on my NAS (and in backups too), but, like those random old PC expansion cards and motherboards I have sat in plastic tubs in the garage, you never know when they'll come in handy.

With my recent health issues imposing some seriously weird visual artefacts on my vision I concur with this 100%. It's all an illusion.

This is a really nice set. Some lovely tones and colours.

"Damp and grey" and "not forecast to change" you say? Yes, it's like summer is never going to end here in the UK. Eventually it'll break and we'll be treated to Cold, damp and grey for the next six months ;-)

A nice set, this one is my pick.

Such shots against light on sea are hard to get, contrast is very high and details can be lost on darker areas. But it's always interesting to see sea shots, it's everchanging and never same.

Very autumnal shots. But when looking at first I thought that it's taken somewhere in Africa for some reason... Maybe the tree on left looks like trees in savanna.

Napoleon in Waterloo?

I like this shot, the layers give good perception of depth.

Thanks.
No AI, just some DXO plugins applied to photos. Comment is as an excuse for deviation from reality in these shots, I did not see such strong colours or nice contrasts. And vague reference to complex numbers, I started to think why photography is complicated and realized that it's as difficult to understand as complex numbers, having both real and imaginary parts :D

This is my favorite from this set. Really nice subject and well framed.

These are gorgeous! The processing magic works so well with the lighting effect.

Some fantastic shots you have here.

My fave..

They are all like paintings. Excellent.

One example..

Your Leica serves you well..

Fab shots, but this one has winning colours.

You have managed to capture the essence of the fabulous area. One among them..