I was to meet some other photographers at Thetford Forest at 06:15.
This meant a 04:50ish rise and shine but with a sweetener of the clocks changing so I got an extra hour in bed.
The Shoot
We did a reccé first wandering around and observed lots of variation of trees and promising signs of some good morning sunrise light.
While the other chaps concentrated on trees in the forest, I wandered around and had a go at some trees where the light was shining on them.
My first shot of a single tree has turned out like a kids first painting at primary school!
The grasses were particularly interesting too so I decided to attempt a handheld ICM shot.
I really like this shot but my wife Kathryn says this image gives her a headache! This one won’t be going on the wall at home then! 🤔
It was the time to try my ‘go to’ zoom burst of a tree but it’s gone bad…
I joined my fellow photographers back in the forest to see they were shooting an interesting dead tree.
It’s alright as a shot I suppose, but nothing wow.
Next up was shooting into a mass of trees and continuing with the handheld ICM shooting.
Next up was possibly my best ICM of the morning which was a row of trees captured by a 4s handheld ICM technique.
This image has been through Nik Colour Efex for a suitable filter to make the image pop, and I really like the different colour tones albeit the image is ‘messy’.
We decided to walk back to a location where we had spotted a large number of mushrooms.
We look around and each selected one to start our “shroom” shooting.
Below is the set I captured and I was quite pleased with this newbie set.
For a couple of these shots, I tried to light them up using my head torch but I think the light was too harsh. A little bit of research later and I discover there are all sorts of LED lights with diffusers and clamps which experienced close-up/macro shooters use.
I used my phone torch for others but it wasn’t strong enough.
My best shot is below where I’ve positioned the camera as low as possible and tried to uplight it.
We were done and declared it a wrap.
We wandered back to the cars for coffee and debrief and on the way back kept spotting other potential images, and we agreed that this is a must return location.
On the way home, I once again resisted Ronald’s faint calling of my name.
Onwards and upwards…