I guess you could say that making images at this time of the year in black and white is the antithesis of what most other photographers would do since to a large extent it goes against what we love about this season - colour. With monochrome, you cannot 'hide behind' the russets, yellows, and oranges but instead, have to seek out strong compositions exhibiting texture and contrast.
To a degree, this made life a little easier since I didn't find myself continually distracted by, and eager to capture, the seasonal colour.
Furthermore, I was using a medium format camera (Hasselblad 500c/m) with each roll having just 12 exposures which forced me to really think about the scene before even considering taking the camera out of the bag. I would carry a small black square mask in my pocket which when held to my eye assisted me in pre-visualising.
My film of choice was Ilford FP4 which was developed, at home, in Rodinal at 1:50 dilution. FP4's a wonderful fine-grain film which, up until December and due to my development process, I was having to rate at ISO 64. Since then I have tweaked the timings and agitation which now enables me to rate it at the box speed of 125 which is an enormous help when shooting plants and within dark woodlands where an additional stop in shutter speed is a real benefit.
Without a tilt/shift lens, ensuring adequate depth of field in an image like the one above would be a very hit and miss afair. I'm very grateful, therefore, for the hyperfocal scales found on the 150mm lens.
A still, misty morning was forecast and so I headed to a substantial area of beechwood which from past experience I knew would be good in such conditions.
Black and white film yields such a broad dynamic range that for all images I would expose for the shadows, stop down by 2 stops (meters read everything as a mid-tone and I wanted the shadows to be 2 stops darker), and let the highlights fall where they may. I further increased the range of shadow and highlight detail by reducing development by 20%.
I picked up this frond of dead bracken, took it home, and placed a piece of black cloth behind it. Illumination came from a window infront and to the side.
