I love night photography, and there is nowhere else I would rather be to practise this genre than in woodland. I enjoy not just the making of images but the whole experience of being alone while others are at home, watching TV, listening to the radio, or reading a book. There is something primeval about being in a place so enclosed and by yourself. With your senses heightened, you notice every snap of a twig, a rustle beneath the leaves, and when a fox barks - well, it's off the scale!
Prior to the most recent lockdown, I visited a remote country lane in the afternoon with no specific goal other than to photograph anything that caught my eye.
As the sun set and dusk fell I noticed the rising moon and with no pending engagements for that evening (unsurprisingly, I have none at present!) I decided to stay on and see what I could produce.
Making photographs in extremely low light with film is both rewarding and a little nerve-wracking where unlike digital you don't have the safety-net of image review nor can you increase the ISO to suit the scene. Your choice of emulsion and exposure settings pretty much comes down to experience and prior experimentation since most handheld spot-meters don't read below -8 EV. Mine only goes to 0. This, to many, might seem like a major drawback but to me, one of the joys of film is the element of surprise for you are never 100% certain what you have got until it is developed, days or weeks after the event.
For the image above I wanted the trace of the moon as it moved through the frame. There was still a little light in the sky, just sufficient for my meter to take a reading. Knowing that an exposure time of around 30 minutes would be required and that I would have to allow for reciprocity law failure, I fitted a Lee ProGlass (3 stop) ND filter onto the 50mm (approximately, 28mm on a full-frame digital or 35mm film camera), set the shutter speed to B (Bulb), the aperture to f/11, locked up the mirror on the Hasselblad 500c/m and commenced the exposure.
When working at night I prefer to use Ilford HP5. It's a forgiving film and unlike others (Delta and TMAX for example) it doesn't easily block up in the shadows and holds up well in the highlights.
Waiting for the exposure time to elapse is the part I enjoy the most for there is nothing I can do other than to stand and listen to the sounds of the woodland, to look up at the stars and wander under the moon's illumination. As I stood near the camera, some distance away a dog-fox barked. Winter is the time for pairing up and when you are most likely to hear barks and wails. It barked again. This time, louder. He was moving closer. And again, louder still. This he repeated until I estimated he was no more than 30 feet or so away from me. All the while I was stock-still and with the wind in my favour he probabaly had no idea I was there at all. Eventually, he moved on and continued on his patrol. It made me realise that if I hadn't decided to stay on and photograph the moon I would never have experienced this priceless moment for you remember these more than you do the photography.
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