Adventures of an Idiot - occasional ramblings of a photography freak

These are not the photos they’re meant to be!

It all started last week, when someone posted a comment on one of my Flickr pics that in my mind suggested a very good (albeit simple) theme for a photo session.
In fact, the more I thought about it the more attracted I became by the idea. To the extent that I’ve spent the past few days mulling it over (and inevitably making plans of course… bad move!). With every intention of embarking upon this self-imposed assignment on Wednesday (the 7th, that would be).

By a curious concatenation of circumstances I’d also been invited to shoot a few pics of someone’s rather attractive-looking cottage, and I’d provisionally penned that in for Tuesday (the 6th).
However, come Tuesday my fundamentally lazy nature kicked in and I decided I really couldn’t be asked to go chasing after pics on both days, so I postponed the cottage session until… um… I dunno, somewhen in the future. All geared up mentally y’see for this really exciting project on Wednesday.

Well, come Wednesday, up with the lark. Gorgeous day. Brilliant sunshine. Temperatures threatening to reach record highs for the time of year. Great!
Wander into town (the location for the “assignment”), do a few nuisance bits and pieces like pay a bill, pick up some tobacco etc and then, wow, the moment’s finally arrived.

Slight problem though. The sun, brightly shining down, is in completely the wrong direction. Probably could’ve worked around it had I changed my gameplan a wee bit, but I’d done so much mulling beforehand that I’d sort of conditioned myself into doing the job in a certain way, from a certain direction, and perversely I just wouldn’t budge from that. (Lesson of the day: don’t think too much about a photo-shoot in advance!!!)
Anyhow, I persevered. But I knew right from the off that it was all gonna be crap. And I was right. And with virtually every shot falling far short of how I’d anticipated it sort of stymied my “ability to see” as it were.
Whilst I’d actually planned about a half-dozen specific shots (none of which worked incidentally) I’d left the rest pretty much to the “inspiration of the moment”. But with the light and my pre-planning working against me, that inspiration simply didn’t happen. Damn and blast!

So feeling well and truly p****d off I retired to my favourite watering hole to review the few shots I had taken. Hmm. Pretty much as I thought. Most of them were rubbish. Oh well, just have to try again later on. Much later on. Like maybe after I’d slit my wrists, died, and reincarnated!

Sulking a bit (and receiving no commiserations from my mate cos he’d had a coupla bad days as well) I quaffed a few coffees, smoked a coupla fags, sulked a bit more, then my intrinsic optimism began to bubble to the surface again.

Maybe I could salvage something from the day. The problem was the sun. Well, I recollect a little spot I’d been promising myself to take a few pics of whenever I could be bothered to make my way out there. A wood I’d discovered a few years ago during a midnight trek (don’t ask!) with a mate (a different one. “How many mates does this guy have”, I hear you ask).

Hmm.

Wait until a bit later in the day. Early evening maybe. Sun going down. Interplay of light and shade. Nice long shadows. Sun-dappled leaves. Great!
So pick up a few supplies for home, avail myself of some transport, and eventually start out on the hike to this little wood.

Wilstead Wood its called. Part of something called Haynes Park apparently. By a strange coincidence near a village named Wilstead (used to be called Wilshamstead a few years back, but they changed the name). Five or six miles or so south of Bedford.

Arrive there late afternoon-ish and straightaway, cameras a-brandished, delve into the woodlands.

Bugger! For every shot I want to take that sun just happens to be in the wrong direction, and there’s unseemly gaps in the trees through which it can peer at me! And when it isn’t, I suddenly discover a curious anomaly.
Trees. Leaves. Shade. You’d think that if anything the problem would be lack of light wouldn’t you? Not a bit of it. Seems that leaves appear to exhibit this curious property of somehow intensifying the light! How weird. Every shot I took I was checking the LCD, and they all looked completely burned out. Fiddle with the settings. Try again. Same thing. Fiddle with all the settings. Same thing again. This is getting boring (to say nothing of frustrating). So eventually I give up completely on the LCD and just trust to my own judgement.

Well, when I finally get back home and transfer all the pics to the beast (for those unfamiliar with my terminology, that means the computer) I’m a bit surprised. Ok, they’re certainly not up to the expectations I had for them before the start, but there are a fair batch that are quite reasonable, subject to a little tweaking (heh heh). (And how many times do I need to discover not to trust the LCD? Talk about monotonous!)

Time for a digression…

Standing outside the gate to the wood at the end of the session, packing up my kit, I get into conversation with this local resident. Chap named Simon.
I’d encountered him a coupla times in the wood, out walking with his daughter and pooch (friendly little fella it was. Some sort of spaniel I think. If I’d had my wits about me I’d have asked if it was ok to take his (her?) photo).
Anyway, he exits the wood as I’m packing my gear and enquires in very friendly manner what I’d been shooting, and had I got any good pics?
So naturally I have a moan about the light and so on and so forth (irrepressible, that’s me), and he gets to tell me a bit about the village, and the wood.
Apparently at the other end of the village there’s another entrance to the wood which, at that end, the villagers have named “Dragons Wood”! Hmm. Sounds exactly like my sort of thing. Have to go back there for another session methinks.
However, we chat for about 20 minutes or so, I give him one of my (brand new!) Moo cards, and we go our separate ways.

So, to return to the tale. I now discover a curious thing. As I start my tweaking (post-processing if you want the proper term) I find that thoughts of friendly Simon are lurking in the forefront of my mind, and for some unaccountable reason it becomes even more important than usual to get the pics looking as close to how I remember seeing things at the time.
Important so that this hitherto stranger, should he ever see the pics, may enjoy and appreciate them and be reminded of pleasant times he may have had walking in the woods. How bizarre!

Well Simon, whoever/wherever you are… thanks for stopping, thanks for chatting, thanks for being friendly, and thanks for inspiring me to put just that little bit more effort into the pics. I really hope you enjoy them, imperfect though they are.

And a final word. No, the pics don’t come up to my expectations, but at least (or so it seems to me) they’re a significant improvement on the disastrous Rowney Warren Wood set of a few months ago (these woodland shots aren’t as easy as they look y’know!). Perhaps I’m getting somewhere after all!
And if nothing else at least I’m well on the way to getting my first suntan of the year (my arms seem to be a very offputting shade of red at the mo’!).

You can see the full set here
and on Ipernity here