tales of the riverbank

Just before the October lockdown was imposed on us (and I mean literally an hour before!) I headed to the small footpath that runs alongside the River Tawe as it wends its way down the Swansea Valley to the sea.

This section of the path in Ynystawe is where I spent most of my teenage years firstly playing near the river and then "courting" (such a nice, old-fashioned term isn't it?) my girlfriend as I grew older.

Anyway, I went there to capture the late afternoon autumn light as it hit the trees and illuminated the beautiful autumn colours there.

The first image does just that and is all about the light, while the second is more a study of a tree and its exposed root system as it tangles its way into the ground high above a small, pebbled beach adjacent to the slow-flowing water.

Technically, the images were quite simple.  A small aperture to get decent depth of field and sharpness throughout the images, a polarising filter to take any glare of the water and leaves and saturate the colours, and a relatively high ISO of 800 to enable a shutter speed fast enough to freeze any motion in the leaves.

Fujifilm GFX50R, Fujinon 23mm f4
1/25th of a second at f16, ISO 800
tripod, self-timer release, Haida Circular Polarising Filter 

Fujifilm GFX50R, Fujinon 23mm f4
6/10th of a second at f16, ISO 800
tripod, self-timer release, Haida Circular Polarising Filter