The learning zone

Planning a first long-distance walk could be described as a huge learning curve. But a curve suggests a smooth and straightforward progression. Really it's more haphazard than that. There is much to learn in many different fields. (Mountain) hares are set running in all directions in pursuit of expertise: gear, navigation, weather, fitness, nutrition, logistics, route planning... Everything needed to be safe and successful, serious rather than half-arsed. Things that reams are written about and careers built upon.

Perhaps 'growing a tree of knowledge' is a better way of putting it (pretentious though!). Something complex but coherent. Making the decision to do this has revitalised many semi-dormant passions and interests. I'm amazed at how I'm suddenly able to find the time for these things, although on paper having less time than ever before, between a full-time job and children.

If you want something enough...!



It may not be as core as safety and survival, but making a good record of the trip, and how to do that, has been on my mind recently. Photographs will be fundamental, that's for sure. So, time to take control, switch all settings to manual, and try to stop being a point'n'clicking random chancer.

I was up and out before sunrise this morning for a first stab at putting recent book-learning into practice, down at my local bit of, ahem, wild land. Well, you can't tame a river. Not even this one.

Minutes before sunrise (bits of dust on the lens - tut tut, amateur!)
This is what starting at the bottom is like, and age doesn't make learning easier. No flow, no intuition, no muscle memory, no neural pathways. Cranking out the calculations, labouring the judgements. Fumbling around with a set of neutral density filters I got last week, trying not to drop everything on the ground or into the river. Only when I get home and download the pictures do I realise I missed step two (step one is taking off the lens cap!): give the lens a brush! D'oh!


A wonderful morning though. The sun grew, strong and swift, launching itself across the river. It was cold.


Messing about with the settings, not quite getting what I predicted, perhaps not knowing what I wanted:



Shooting with the sun behind is relatively simple but not as exciting:




The neutral density filters are possibly essential for landscape and nature photography, where getting the balance right between sky and whatever's underneath is difficult. All too familiar in my hillwalking pictures: nicely exposed foreground and washed-out sky; or too-dark foreground and beautiful sky.

For the two pictures below, I set the exposure for the river - exactly the same settings for both. The first picture was taken without any filter; the second is with a graduated neutral density filter reducing the intensity of the light entering the top half of the frame (the sky).


Without ND grad filter

With hard grad 2(?) stop filter
It sounds counter-intuitive, but control and predictability in using the tools can fire spontaneity and creativity. The more ingrained the mechanics, the more free of them you are: flow is the goal. I hope to be some way there with the camera by the time I start the walk.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Island time

Image
Early morning, near the end of a week of family camping on Harris, I sneaked out to the car while the children slept the deep sleep of tired, sore legs and fresh air. Minutes later I was swooping along, riding the rollercoaster road from beach and sea loch-head saltmarsh, following tilting rows of telegraph poles up to barren, slabby mountain passes. I was aiming for the cloud-swathed heart of Harris where wild mountains climb from sea to summit and dark rocky glens curve into the interior. The Clisham is the crowning hill, the highest on the Outer Hebrides, but I didn't want to just 'raid' it from the highest point on the road. The bridge over the Abhainn Sgaladail, which drains the northwestern aspect of Clisham and its satellites, is a much more sporting 50 metres above sea level. Wet moorland gives way to slabby pavements on the first top, Tomnabhal. Huge Loch Langhbhat wends north from its mountain cradle into the flat watery maze of inland Lewis. This is recognisably ...
Read more

Daytripping the Monadhliath

Image
The signs weren't good but I couldn't help feeling good. I was hurtling north through clag and drizzle on the A9, early on Saturday morning. A short notice work trip to Scotland, an evening visiting parents in Fife, then north for a dose of solitude and space in the anti-London, the beleaguered beauty of the Monadh Liath. Crossing Drumochter a veil was drawn back, the glen unwound ahead and a great rent of blue appeared in the clouds above. From Kingussie I walked up by the Gynack Burn. A stream of cars was arriving at the local golf course - different strokes for different folks. I was heading straight for the rough. Beyond the manicured greens the glen narrows and the road winds though hoary trees bearded with lichen. On the left the Gynack rumbles and chatters through it's wide rocky bed. It's still, gloomy, mild. Climbing gradually over sombre moors, the cloud softening then obliterating. A golden glow persists all day over Strathspey. There's an edge to things ...
Read more

A walk in the woods in Fife

Image
Walking in the woods at daybreak. A simple spartan ritual; a heavenly indulgence. A circuit of four or five miles from the door of the house I grew up in, I've walked it hundreds of times over the years. Coal trains once rocked and rumbled along the railway north of the woods. Then after bitter times the mines closed and the tracks were lifted, leaving only old ballast slowly reclaimed by grass, between blazing banks of August willowherb. In later years the track bed became a hardcore path, then a tarmaced cycle way. Progress. All around, cars multiplied, and houses, and new roads, supermarkets, retail parks, more aircraft overhead, computers, commuters and offices, more stuff and more stress. The woods conceal the distant beginnings of the long boom. There are hidden mine shafts and tunnels where coal was extracted by hand. But up here I can still find what I'm looking for. So can foxes. badgers, roe deer, and a host of birds, keeping the neighbourhood in touch with itself. Af...
Read more