The Manger
The Manger
It's been a strange year. Covid-19 Lock-downs didn't really come to an end until July by which time the great clouds and light associated with Winter and Spring had passed. Summer is not my favourite season and not the favourite season of many landscape photographers due to the often harsh light, the ridiculously early starts and the late finishes necessary to capture the early/late light. But summer has now passed and Autumn with its shorter days is very much here. Trees are loosing their green's and starting to reveal their yellow. As it's been a dry year we may not get the orange colours that sometimes follow but the next few weeks will tell. Fingers crossed!
The Wiltshire Downs are known for their white horses; not the living, breathing type but those carved into the chalky hillsides. One of the famous horses is near Uffington on White Horse Hill. The horse is carved high on a hillside and is best photographed from the air. What drew me to the location one July evening was the feature called The Manger just below the horse. It's a steep sided, elongated valley that cuts into the chalky hillside. In days past the hillside was the location of a Cheese rolling competition something that possibly still only continues at Coopers Hill in Gloucestershire.
Leaving home there was a little high-level cloud that could have made a nice sunset, however, The Manger is just over an hour's drive East and inland from Bristol where the weather can often be different. It was on this occasion; clear blue skies with distant cloud towards the horizon and a light breeze moving the grasses. Not what I hoped for! Not awful though!
This was one of the early outings this year with the new Fujifilm GFX100S. Using greater than ISO 400 on my previous landscape camera would have resulted in significant noise, however, the GFX100S is a monster. The above photograph was made at ISO 1250 and has little noise. Its Dynamic range is also significantly wider making this high contrast image possible with a single exposure.
Andy
