On Location Photographing Ashdown Forest with the XF23mm F2
A few weeks ago, I ventured out into the forest with my dog, Holly and Fujifilm X-T30 camera. Apart from taking Holly for a nice long walk, I wanted to try out my new Fujifilm XF23mm F2 prime lens I had recently bought to go with my other two 16mm and 35mm prime lenses. This line of Fujifilm prime lenses are fantastic. They are well made, fast focusing, light, and weather-resistant. All bases covered when needing a light-weight walkabout camera kit.
To test the camera, I decided to head into the forest and make a series of photos that told the story of the place I was in, the time of year and the conditions we had. I wasn’t looking for a portfolio worthy photo, I knew the conditions weren't great for some fine are woodland photography such as a recent image I shared here Forest Bliss | Weekly Photo #58. I just wanted to document my walk with Holly, play with a bit of depth of field, and have a bit of fun with the new lens.
I’ve not yet introduced you to Holly so here’s a little bit about her. Holly has been with us since December 2019. We’re not sure what breed she is but she is a rescue dog, brought over from Romania by a charity that looks to rehome dogs away from some quite awful conditions. Holly came to us underweight, riddled with flees and feeling quite sorry for herself but after a visit to the vets, the groomers, and a lot of love from her new family, she has settled in and is now loving her new life with us. Holly will undoubtedly become a regular feature on future posts.
After my walk, I wanted these photos to look like they belonged together. As I mentioned, none of these are portfolio worthy, alone they might look rather average but bringing them together as a sum of multiple parts makes the entire collection stronger in my opinion.
There were a few things I did in Lightroom to make them feel a part of the set. Firstly, I focused on colour and tones. I edited the first image in the set, played with the HSL sliders to get the colours the way I liked such as the deep, summer greens on the ferns, and the rich oranges and purples in the flowers. I then applied the same edits across all of the photos and tweaked each one individually to match the rest of the set. Next, I cropped each one to a square format, again, to help uniform the look of the photos and make them appear to be a part of this set.
With the sky full of dense cloud, light levels were really poor, especially amongst the trees in the forest so this was a really good test for how my new prime lens coped. Close focusing was a bit of a problem at the widest apertures but its far from a macro lens so that is easily forgiven. That aside, the camera and lens never missed a beat. Across all of the photos, the only setting I changed was the aperture. I set the camera to aperture priority, a target shutter speed of 1/125th second, and auto-ISO was set to a max of 800. I would then tweak the aperture depending on the light and look I was trying to achieve. You can select each image to get a larger view and see the settings that were used for each photo.
I’m pleased with the final collection of photos and hope to share more, presented in a similar way in the future. I would love to hear what you think about picture storytelling, this particular collection, or just to say you like dogs too!
Until next time.
Trevor