On this trip I tried monochrome again, to mixed degrees of success…

Located roughly at ///blogs.suave.unveils on what3words, Wallington is a National Trust property based in Northumberland. I was hoping to get some images of window light coming in to the halls interior, sadly the hall was closed to the public at the time, as was the greenhouse (which looks like it’ll be closed for the foreseeable).

Worst Things First

Unlike my entry last week, there are a couple in this category. In the most part, this was through my overestimation of the monochrome film (again…).

The biggest kicker for me with this group of images is the last one. I had metered for it, zoomed in to the building, but then I stood for so long waiting for the path to clear the light must have changed more than what was visible to my eyes, as a result the settings were way off. I normally wouldn’t have stood and waited, but from metering I held my camera up to my eye and the path was clear, and a couple walked into the frame just as I was about to press the button. This is something I’m used to, but when the image isn’t recoverable like it is in digital its just a bit disappointing.

OK Images

Most of the remaining shots on monochrome fall into this section (bar one). I think the photo of the boathouse is an improvement over the one above. I think I needed to be closer to make it work, although I don’t know how much closer I could get with a fixed focal length camera without getting rather wet… The contrast is better on that one than the previous one though.

With the wheelbarrows I had envisaged a crop that was just them framed by the hedge. The colours were what originally caught my eye, just the framing didn’t quite work out how I had intended.

Favourites from the day

The Greenhouse

This is probably my favourite monochrome image I’ve taken so far. The sky was just saved from blowing out, and whilst the rest of the image is dark, there are enough highlights in the path and the windows to give the image enough details for me.

The Owl and the Lake

In the hand, this is my favourite image of the day. It doesn’t seem to translate to the computer screen though. I had originally thought this was due to how I was scanning the images through a photo frame to keep them flat, but I didn’t do that for these images. I’m now starting to think that it may be the lack of resolution in the film being made larger for my computer screen and looking unsharp as a result. Hopefully this will look fine on a phone screen as that will be much closer to the size intended - let me know in my DMs!

With the image though as it stands, I like the building and how it is framed in the gap in the trees. I like the warm colour pop from the owl, but most of all I like the texture of the light in the ripples in the water.

The Hall Front(?)

I don’t know if this is classed as the front, or if it would be the side of the hall. I waited for some time for it to clear, and opted to pull the trigger for the shot with one lone person crossing in front of the hall. In a digital file from my Fuji I would have cropped in and made more of this person, but obviously don’t have that option on instax. I’m not even sure you’d notice he was there if not pointed out… Either way I still like how the hall turned out none-the-less.

The Corner

I think f16 is my favourite aperture on this camera. I don’t know what that would be in full frame terms, I’d guess 8-11 or somewhere in that range. This seems to be the range that the camera likes for shots of textural buildings like this. It wanted the ND2 for this one, hence the (+1), but I’m pleased I decided to be lazy and not get it out of my bag. I think that would have been too dark. It would have given more texture to the sky, but I wanted the details in the wall to shine here, so I think I made the right call.

If you would like to see more of my landscape work, moving forward most of the images will be here in blog format, but I will notify of new entries on my Instagram page for landscapes - @photog.righ

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