Back to the woods

 Click on the images for a larger version.  All images copyright Leslie Ashe.

With a forecast of overcast conditions I decided I would return to some woodland.   However, the weather gods were not playing ball and I had a morning of soft sunlight instead.

Undaunted I went ahead anyway hoping that the forecast cloud cover would materialise.  The sunlight limited the photographic opportunities somewhat but I needed to get in some practice for the time when lockdown restrictions are eased.  Also, I needed to spend some time dealing with the weight of my camera bag and tripod so that I wouldn’t be completely out of shape when I can get back to the mountains.

My first port of call was to a tree that I had photographed several times.  The first must have been about 30 years ago.   Great disappointment - it has fallen.  Just for the record I photographed its remains.

Then

Now

I then wandered of into an area I hadn’t visited before and while I shot a few frames they were really just to get some practice and were quickly deleted.   I spotted an old stump of a tree which had split and parts of it seemed to be embracing the rest of the remains.  There was dappled light on it  and I used my shadow to ensure more even light across it.

After a bit of a walk to get back on the beaten track I visited another tree which I had photographed before.  I think it’s a beech but it is an unusual shape and stands out because it’s on it’s own and everything behind it is such a tangle of interlocking branches and brambles.

I though that was me finished but on the walk out I happened to glance up the hill and saw some splashes of green on a tree.  I went up to investigate to discover new buds on a chestnut tree just opening - the first I have seen this year. The branches were well spread out and the new leaves so small that the tree itself would not have made an image.  I resorted to concentrating on a couple of buds in the throes of opening.  I wanted the background out of focus and to ensure I had as much of the subject in focus as I could I resorted to focus stacking.  The other issue was that the breeze had got up and so everything was moving.  I had to increase the ISO to 800 and at f5.6 I had a shutter speed of 1/400th and hoped that would be sufficient to deal with the movement.

The result was this image from a 4 image stack and which was cropped to 4 x 5 to remove another bud which I thought looked OK on the back of the camera but didn’t really work.  It's not great as I needed another image for the stack - the leaf nearest the camera isn't sharp!

A good morning's walk and an image to represent the new beginnings of spring.  Hopefully a harbinger of better times ahead.