Saturday afternoon we headed out for the wilds of Bristol, Rhode Island. We had packed camera gear for a good portion of the morning. The weather was mediocre; wet and warm. The skies overcast with a muted grey that did not look like it was going to break contrary to the weather reports. Our Ghiorse factor was high (I don't know what this means, but it is the scale the local weatherman uses - his name is Ghiorse).

For those of you who are familiar with Bristol you will wonder why we were packing for a good portion of the morning. Bristol is an idilic seaside town with beautiful coastline and numerous eateries and open spaces. The majority of the time I spent packing was used hunting down missing bulk roll canisters and then loading film. No heavy lifting or fancy gear, just a slow morning.

It may seem odd to pick a B&W film (the bulk TMAX I am using) for an idilic seaside town, but I have read in numerous sources that shooting around noon-time is largely a waste of time anyway. I think that in B&W I can overcome this color bias. The theory is that early morning and early evening have the richest color and therefore the rest of the day should be spent searching for good locations and traveling. B&W is a game of contrast and composition, so the color bias of early morning and night don't apply (or so I set out to test).

Whenever I hear of these "rules" I want to break them. I recognize that during the hours of 11am-3pm landscape shooters will pretty much stay inside. So, if I am to carve a niche shooting when other people won't seems like a good opportunity.

We pulled into the stately driveway of the Audubon Society and pulled into a parking space. There was an abundance of young children and parents; it was family day. We moved through the exhibits and then stepped outside into the grey.

Shortly after walking on to the path the fog rolled in. We looked on as the dense fog wafted past carrying with it the distant rhythm of waves on the shore. It was a scene of subtle interplay of light and shadow. The cattails in the foreground were the light tan of a sun-beaten winter, while the trees moved in and our of focus like odd fractal shapes in the distance.

I used my new exposure meter - a Soligor spot meter - to determine the exposure. When I got back my film I discovered an unexpected result. The negatives looked contrasty and rich, but the positives were washed out and lacking definition. I had to move the dark and light point in order to bring the dynamic range back to the scene. I am not sure if it was a exposure mistake, a processing flaw, or just the scene, but my meter didn't serve my purposes well. Given the soft white that pervaded the landscape I am led to this preliminary conclusion: The difference in exposure between land and sky was never greater than 2 stops. Often it was closer. When I metered a light point for 18% grey, I was in-fact moving the whole scene into this realm. For all the photos I moved the black point to bring back up the shadow. This is photo correction, not manipulation, so I feel pretty good about the results. Some photos I left with very close to the original contrast level because of the beauty of the fog. I could have scanned in the photos differently and compensated some before even bringing the photos into photoshop, but the real solution is metering differently next time.

If I remember correctly the saying goes, "expose for the shadows, process for the highlights." This is the rule for the Zone system of exposure. I didn't follow this rule and the result was very very light. An interesting lesson. Next time I will have to meter not for what I think is 18% grey, but for the darkest shadow that I want to still contain detail. This is Zone III on the zone scale.... and that is all I remember off hand so I will have to put my nose in some books and study the rest of how to make this whole this work.

We wondered out to the shore and watched as geese and seagulls floated in and out of the mist. It was a beautiful moody scene. The fog forced a simplicity upon the landscape and critical focus was a moot concept. Everything was a little foggy.

After standing around for a bit it got rather cool (the Ghiorse factor didn't include the shore I guess). We walked back down the path and paused at the intersection with the Bike path. Amie noticed a frog in the water and we took some shots of the well camouflaged critter. When we had our fill of the frog, we noticed an energetic plump squirrel making a nest in the trees.

He stopped and posed for us while we took a series of shots. A few people walked past drawn by curiosity to see what we were excited about. I think we let them down. They didn't find the squirrel as interesting as we did. Oh well.

Banal? Perhaps. I didn't break new ground with squirrel photography, but it made me laugh with its antics.

On the way back to the car a nice young lady gave us a heads up about some large bird down the path a ways. Sure enough we came across it sitting in the field, but as we were both caught by surprise it got away before I got little more than a snap of its escape. Amie had the long lens, but she didn't even get a chance to get her camera up before it was gone. This shot was taken with my 135mm from a distance of 50-75 feet (a rough guess).

After we left the Society we stopped in for some excellent pizza (though in my haste I managed to singe my tongue pretty well). I loaded up a roll of Velvia and a roll of Astia in Hasselblad backs. The Nikon was the B&W camera for the day; the Hassy the calendar shot camera with the color film. My thought was to capture different levels of subtly with the different film. More on that next time.