My blog has been rather sporadic lately. I'm still struggling with the loss of my Dad, but I have to carry on and keep doing the things I enjoy, photography and writing. It was my birthday weekend and, as it was a sunny Sunday morning, I decided to finally shoot the roll of Agent Shadow in my Olympus OM-2 at 800 iso. It has been sat in my bag for two months so I got my boots and jacket on, picked up my bag and headed out to my usual circuit of the local farms.
I also decided that an orange filter would be beneficial on this bright sunny morning. There was a few clouds in the sky and I reckoned a little separation of the clouds against the clear blue areas of sky would help my compositions. Agent Shadow is a film full of contrast so lightening the autumn colour with an orange filter and pushing it one stop seemed the way to go. I would find out later when I developed the film.
The bright autumn sunshine was low in the sky and it created pools of light through the trees that invited me to take a photo as I made my way along the farm roads. Getting close up with my OM-2 was made easier by using my Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 and aperture priority. There is always plenty of texture in autumn as the leaves change colour and the pools of light seemed to find it for me. Thanks Dad.
There was a particularly nice pool of light that lit up one of the antique ploughs on display. It's not one I usually photograph, but that's hardly a surprise as I rarely venture out in the morning. The brown leaves of the hedge behind and next to it was glowing in the morning sun and I lingered a while to grab a few shots and pick out some solitary leaves in the hedges.
When I arrived at the fields I switched lenses to my Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 to tighten up my compositions a little. I love this lens, wide open it has a creamy bokeh, but on this day with an orange filter I was going for the narrow apertures, f/11 and f/16. for good front to back focus. The Horses have been moved into their winter stables and I was happy to see the Sheep returned to the big field. This gave a new backdrop to my favourite tree and I spent a little time getting some photos from a couple of places along the trail.
I headed up to the old spoil heap to see if I had missed all the autumn colour and yep, I had. I wasn't too upset about it though as I was presented with some contrasting scenes of oak trees with brown leaves against the silver birch trees that have shed all their foliage ready for their winter slumber. I soon finished my roll of film and was still only half way through my walk.
I shot a roll of colour film on the second half of my walk, I will talk about that in the not too distant future, and headed home. When I got home I was rather tired, it has been a couple of months since I walked this route and it showed. I was knackered! I decided to develop my film the next day and spent the rest of the day in recovery.
I checked the Massive Dev Chart and found a couple of bits of information for developing this film when shot at 800 iso. I have mentioned in a previous blog about Agent Shadow that I would gve dilution E a try. I figured an extra couple of minutes would help bring out the best from this film, particularly as I had used an orange filter.
With that in mind I developed my roll of Agent Shadow in HC-110 dilution E (1+47) for 13 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. I scanned it using my trusty Ion Slides2PC 35mm scanner and gave it a polish with Affinity Photo 2.
800 iso was definitely the right speed for the woodland section of this walk. I was able to get some decent shots and the orange filter brightened up the dying foliage and made it stand out in my single leaf shots. It wasn't the best choice for the more open areas of my walk, but it did tame the contrast and gave me more dynamic range to play with in post production.
Here's a few of my photos from this roll of Agent Shadow and as always I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I needed this roll of film to get me back on track and get out and about taking photos to exercise my old grey matter. My Dad was an avid reader of my blog and he would definitely have wanted me to get back out again. It might take me a little longer to settle back into it, but I will be posting my blog every week and sharing my photos with you again. I hope you enjoy them.
Agent Shadow @ 800 iso - OM-2
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