I spent nine days in (or close to) a beautiful forest on the Veluwe, a Dutch National Park. It was so wonderful to smell the pine trees, wander around without any time pressure, and find little spots of beauty. There was a variety of weather conditions over those days, but I enjoyed each one of them. I walked the forest with my backpack with both the digital M240 and the analogue M2, but the rolls have not been developed yet. While I am exercising my patience for the film results, I want to share the images I got with the M240.

Day one:

A fairly grey day, until sunset. I didn’t bring my tripod, and the forest was quite dark, so I didn’t get a single sharp image from the morning session. I went out again around sunset, when it had cleared up, and with the sky colors changing fast. The first image shows the late sun on a row of trees lining a heather field. The second one shows the sky where the sun has just set, behind a beautiful birch tree.

Day two:

I am in awe of the height of the trees in this forest. My widest lens is (was) a 35mm, not nearly wide enough to capture them, so I tried a few panorama shots to get everything in the frame:

Day three:

Today there is actually some sun coming through, so I focussed on getting that in the picture. The early morning light looks great on the heather field, but also gives nice long shadows in the forest:

Day four:

Somehow I managed to get a 15mm lens! Some people say coincidence doesn’t exist, but on the day I was fabricating the panorama photos I saw a tweet about a Voigtlander Heliar Super Wide 15mm lens. I have been thinking about getting a wider lens before, and reading about this lens, while struggling to capture the large trees, made me think once more. Again, no coincidence of course, there happened to be an occasion of this lens available in my local camera store, so my man picked it up for me on day three. Or: day four was all about trying this new weird perspective…

Day five:

Day five was like a miracle. The best conditions thinkable for creating fairytale photos: fog and a bit of sun. Today I was in heaven. And of course the experiment with the super-wide lens continued…

Day six:

Today not the wonderful fog, and not even a ray of sunlight. Just some hazy air, which has its own beauty. It gave the forest a calm and quiet atmosphere. And the picture with the leaves would not have been possible with the sun, as the contrast would have made it unpleasant.

Day seven:

The night between day six and day seven had brought a lot of rain, so day seven was all about the freshness you get from wet leaves. Moreover, the rain created a small pool for me to get creative with reflections.

Day eight:

Today was like a normal day, with a cloudy sky causing light to change fast. With the use of the self-timer to avoid vibrations on the tripod, that means getting a few misses as the sun disappeared between the time of pushing the button and actually exposing. But I still got a few good sun-star images. The last one of the selection below astonished me, this is the kind of reflections/flare you can get from the Super Wide Heliar. I like the blue circles, and I like the abundance in this picture.

Day nine:

Last day, feeling a bit sad. I went to a slightly different part of the forest where I could find a stream. The bottom two pictures show the same location, but with different focal lengths. I like them both!

Next time I hope to have the film results ready. For now: Thanks for reading!