Quick Shot: Trees on a Hill
My start in film photography began in what most people would consider the wrong direction. Rather than first investing in a 35mm camera, I started in large format photography with a Zone VI 4x5 film camera. If you aren't familiar with the camera, it looks like the old style bellows camera that you imagine Ansel Adams using (he actually did use this style!). The film it takes is sheet film that measures 4x5 inches in size, so the negative is huge and therefore captures extreme details.
I brought the camera along when I moved to England, but had to wait a little bit while I sourced film before I could take it shooting. After finally getting some 4x5 sheet film, I headed to one of my favorite local sites, a National Trust area called Lyveden New Bield to take a few shots. Four actually - that's all the film I packed!
I took this photograph on a complete whim. I wasn't sure it would work, but I liked the hill with a few trees that was being back lit by the sun. It was early spring, so the trees just had the little buds where leaves would emerge any second. Framing the image was tricky - especially as the wind kept blowing the trees pretty heavily! I loaded a piece of film and waited several minutes for a slight reprieve in the wind and then shot at the fastest shutter speed on the lens hoping to freeze the limbs for a perfectly sharp silhouette. I got lucky!
Developed at home in my studio - film is Ilford Delta Pro 100.