Autumn at Walden Pond with the Fuji X-E1 and 35mm f/1.4 lens

This past weekend it was off to Walden Pond in Concord, MA to add some autumn photos to the portfolio I am doing illustrating what the pond might have looked like to Henry David Thoreau when performing his famous experiment by living there for two years beginning in 1845. I have been photographing the pond for in every season for a year. I have been using a Nikon D800 to photograph the series, but this time I also tucked a Fuji X-E1 with 35mm f/1.4 lens into my bag. As it turned out, I wound up using the X-E1 more than the D800. There was something about being able to shoot from extremely low angles and tucking it into difficult positions that was very convenient. I had also set the camera to record 1:1 square format in both RAW and jpg. For the jpg, I chose the high color profile of Velvia which looked great on the LCD and gave me a very good approximation of what my images would finally look like once I had reworked the RAW in Photoshop.

I have already ordered an X-E2 so I included the X-E1 on this trip for sentimental reasons, thinking it might be my last serious outing with it.

I set the camera to record jpg in addition to RAW because it is the only way to use the 1:1 format. I always work my images in RAW and never process from the jpgs, using them occasionally as a reference only. Working on the images in RAW allows full 16-bit control of the colors and contrast that is not possible in 8-bit jpg. The autumn colors are Walden are subtly brilliant and benefit from some careful post-processing to bring them out without falsely over-doing it.

It was interesting to me that while I had two very different cameras with me, I didn't find a conflict in the choice of which one to use. They complemented each other, each serving a different purpose. In my next post I will publish the images taken with the D800. I haven't processed them yet, but I suspect they will have a different look and feel.

I  used a polarizing filter to deepen the sky and water as well as to bring out the saturated colors in the autumn leaves.

The small size of the X-E1 allowed me to place it right on the forest floor for shots like this one and the one of pine needles below, both taken at a spot right around where Thoreau built his cabin.  I often used a wide open aperture to obtain extremely pleasing bokeh effect for which the Fuji 35mm f/1.4 lens is famous. 

The woods next to where Thoreau had his cabin.

I found the full color palette of this scene unusually striking, especially the purple hues. 

I can't think of a better way to end this one year photo journey of mine than the same way it began, with Thoreau's most famous introductory quote to the book on his Walden experience.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.” 

© Henry David Thoreau, "Walden, or Life in the Woods"

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Description: Autumn at Walden Pond with the Fuji X-E1 and 35mm f/1.4 lens Rating: 3.5 Reviewer: LAMPSOLS ItemReviewed: Autumn at Walden Pond with the Fuji X-E1 and 35mm f/1.4 lens

Using the Fuji X-E1 in place of my Hasselblad to photograph late autumn leaves

A long time ago I began a project of photographing the fallen leaves of late autumn, leaves past their prime, leaves that had already lost their brilliant color and vibrancy and were in a final state of decay. The project was inspired by a passage from Autumnal Tints, by Henry David Thoreau, and is quoted at the end of this post. I have repeated this project every year since in homage to Thoreau and his keen observation.

I had spent my career photographing the beauty of autumn in its prime, the brilliant colors of leaves still on the trees and filling the countryside with a colorful palette of warm autumn tints. Thoreau taught me to drill down deeper, not to stop at the surface gloss. He found significant meaning for life infused in the even the tiniest and seemingly insignificant elements of nature that abounded around him.

I treated the leaves as sculptural elements and photographed them in my studio on film with a Hasselblad 500CM. I have repeated this project every year since, changing the style of photography each year while trying to remain faithful to the original theme. This year I went back to my roots, however instead of using the Hasselblad, I relied on a Fuji X-E1 which I put into its square format in homage to the Hasselblad. 

This is one of t he first late autumn leaf sepia toned prints I did with the Hasselblad about twenty years ago.

The images below were all taken this year with the Fuji X-E1, a 35mm lens set to f/8, and either a +2 or +4 close-up filter. The light is a mix of soft window illumination and one small tungsten lamp. I kept he light balance towards the warmer tungsten hues.

"It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould!--painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their last resting place, light and frisky. They put on no weeds, but merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting the spot, choosing a lot, ordering no iron fence, whispering all through the woods about it,--some choosing the spot where the bodies of men are mouldering beneath, and meeting them half-way. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! They that soared so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree, and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if the time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and as ripe,--with such an Indian-summer serenity will shed their bodies, as they do their hair and nails."

Henry David Thoreau from Autumnal Tints, written in 1862 as he lay dying from tuberculosis. He was expounding on the difference between looking and seeing when he also wrote: "Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them....

Thoreau took the time to look closely at the most ordinary objects in his path. His examination always found meaning beyond the thing itself. Photography should be like that.  

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Description: Using the Fuji X-E1 in place of my Hasselblad to photograph late autumn leaves Rating: 3.5 Reviewer: LAMPSOLS ItemReviewed: Using the Fuji X-E1 in place of my Hasselblad to photograph late autumn leaves