After what seemed like weeks without getting out thanks to Covid and then storm Eunice, it was amazing to have a weekend of trips out in the fresh air.
My wife suggested Walsingham Abbey to see the snowdrops as we hadn’t been to this place for a few years.
As it turned out, the snowdrops were mostly a little past their best, and had endured the storms the previous weekend. This is why I don’t have any snowdrop shots worthy of posting so for the banner picture I’ve used a shot from last year.
Walsingham Abbey has a great walk from the small garden through to the very enjoyable woodland via the ruins of the old abbey.
At the small garden area, I got this shot of a Hellebore flower.
This is a popular location and proven by bumping into a fellow photography club member and another friend too.
On this trip, it was my first outing with a new lens, the 50mm Z 2.8 MC lens. This is the more cost effective of the two Nikon Z macro lenses.
I was tempted in the first lockdown to buy the more premium macro lens (the 105mm Z) but never pulled the trigger.
What made me leap to buy this was the impending Nikon price rises, and an opportunity to try shots with a different lens.
The 50mm is probably a good lens to own as it can be many things: a portrait lens, a street photography lens and a macro lens. Many photographers refer to a 50mm lens as a “nifty fifty” due to its flexibility and compact size.
In previous years when trying to shoot snowdrops and bluebells etc, I’ve been annoyed and frustrated at struggling with focus. In my mind, a macro lens would help.
What I’ve learnt though is that such photos require focus stacking. This is a technique where several shots are taken at different focus point from the front to the back, and then those images are blended in post production using software to make the final image such that everything across the scene is sharp.
Because flowers have petals and lots of curved elements, cameras will, tend to focus on one area. Even using a narrow depth of field is unlikely to get everything sharp.
On this trip, and mainly because there’s a stark warning on the entrance to the abbey ref no commercial photography, I went tripod free, so wouldn’t be doing any focus stacking this time.
However, I really enjoyed the challenge on wandering around and seeing what I could do with a fixed focal length ‘prime’ lens.
As this was late in the day, it ended up being in a little bit of a rush but nevertheless I had a very enjoyable walk round the woodland trying different shots.
In the end, I didn’t get any good snowdrop shots, partly because of time to hunt a good composition but also because the previous weekends storm had damaged a lot of the snowdrops. If truth be told, it was perhaps also just past the best period of the snowdrops.
However, I did get some good shots in the woodland though with the scene below possibility my best of the visit.
I’ve read many articles recommending that we try fixed ‘prime’ lenses or taking openly one lens out to stretch your creativity thinking.
There were a couple of times when I missed my beloved wide angle lens but I moved my carcass back or somewhere else, or just accepted a tighter shot and came to enjoy the experience of living within a single focal length.
Back at the car, I was testing how close the lens could focus by taking a shot of the badge in the middle of the steering wheel.
Onwards and upwards.