The 'Cathedral' of Beech Trees

Started out before sunrise yesterday, armed with the tripod, my two DSLRs and an array of lenses - to make full use of the only fine day of the past ten days, or so. On cue, it's dull again, today.

So, to Grovely Wood and first things, with all these foreign trees giving autumnal colourful splendour in our parks, it's easy to assume that our native species are, too. They're not, as you can see, in this shot of beeches, that line an old Roman Road, in parts.

From the sunrise over Salisbury Cathedral, five miles away, to beautiful, warm landscapes of the surrounding farmland, (with a deer) all shot using the tripod and polarising filters and many many shots from within the woods, I had many many choices for my blip.

However, I feel that my final choice cannot fail to impress, on the majesty of its Cathedral-like grandeur alone. The key is, of course, is to have a/some figures in it, to give it scale and extra interest. This stretch of the road (the Wilton Estate, part of Wilton House, The Earl of Pembroke, who own the Woods is private land with limited public access and thus only for walkers, joggers, cyclists and horseriders) is nearly 2/3rds mile long and one can see figures appearing a long way off.

This group seemed to take ages to get any nearer and I had my tripod in the middle of the leaf-strewn track. I was using the mirror-up facility on the D7000, which gives time for the mirror to settle down after being locked up before exposure, which was quite long and at a small aperture, for maximum quality and enough depth of focus to cover the whole image.

I have since smoothed out some of the contrast/exposure peaks and troughs, but selectively, using the lassoo, rather than overall. I then added some warmth. The resulting PSD being over 45mb! and this uploaded jpeg copy over 21mb....file sizes are getting BIGGER!

After walking with that lot of gear for over eight hours and over nearly ten miles and mostly being cold, I feel really rather tired today...like I've been bulldozed by a dozen charging bison, in fact....but I don't go the gym, or jog, so my photography IS my exercise, physically AND psychologically...and my therapy. And I get loads of goodies to share as well! You don't get that pumping iron...