A Hot Morning in the Woods

The Woodland Belt at Wimpole is closed except one short path through Eversden Woods. I hope these infrared images give a feel of the almost impenetrable wildness of ivy and undergrowth that is developing in the undisturbed parts of the wood.

Cyanotypes

Yesterday, I shared a day making Cyanotypes with members of Cambridge Camera club. Lots of fun was had doing both wet cyanotypes where various 'chemicals' can be added to the composition before exposing to the sun, and dry cyanotypes done on commercial precoated paper. As so often, it was the detail in some of the images before washing that took my eye.

Shapes and Patterns at the Botanic Gardens

I was photographing the shapes of single leaves and the patterns of their rosettes of leaves and their symmetry when I came to this ?Aloe. The new leaves develop in a spiral pattern but with a 5 point shape in the centre.

Botanic Gardens Shallow Depth of Field

The Jade vine is in full flower at the moment and has such large hanging groups of flowers that the corridor is closed to prevent damage to the plant. I was using an Olympus legacy lens from my film days - most are taken at F1.8, all manually focused. My favourite is the Pitcher plant - here the lens was still missed up giving a real rain forest feel to the image.

Autumn Colours at Santon Downham 1

Perhaps due to the lack of frost, it has not been a great year for autumn colours with a lot of leaves shrivelling before falling but there were enough colourful trees at Santon Downham to keep our small party from CCC happy playing with ICM and Multiple exposure. I used two different camera systems - the morning set here were handheld with the Fuji X100V which has the facility to take multiple exposure and to change blending modes. Most of these are only 2 exposures in Average mode - for instance, the first image has one out of focus image blended with an in-focus image. Images 3 and 6 have a colour temperature change between exposures etc!

Cyanotypes

 As Saturday was a sunny day, I decided to have a play with more cyanotypes (see previous attempt last July here) The first of the three images shows the coated paper with specimens and various added substances - salt, paprika etc; the second after exposure before rinsing and the third when rinsed and dried. I think I probably exposed some for a bit too long to get the subtle tones - the 4th image shows the exposed brown state - interesting that the veins show on the leaves before washing but not after. I will try on a duller day for comparison.