The woods of Mount Desert Island
Here are some photos from a hike into the woods on Mount Desert Island, Maine, inside Acadia National Park. They are black and white edits of RAWs, taken on the Fujifilm X100VI. I originally intended to edit these in color, due to the breathtaking light blanketing beautiful evergreens and moss, but I locked myself in. Let me explain.
I’ve had my X100VI set to a black and white recipe that intentionally uses a high ISO range to get noise in the photos. The theory is that the sensor noise—in black and white, anyway—better emulates film grain. In scenes with limited shadows, this usually works okay. But under a tree canopy with intense shadows, the photos end up looking too muddy in color. Black and white it is!
Another thing I’m noticing is that the diffusion filter I have permanently attached to my lens is creating blooms I’m liking less and less every time I see them. That also locks me into edits that may not fit every scene. Many of this set looked downright bad in color. I believe I shall remove that filter (side note, I’d been trying to decide whether to put a diffusion filter on the GFX100RF when it arrives, but after seeing the results in this set, I think I’ll stick to a plain protection filter going forward).
In this set, I decided to embrace higher contrast more than my typical black and white edits (though the SOOC JPG’s were also good). Forests can be visually busy. The higher contrast minimizes the busyness and draws the eye to the same spots of light my eye was drawn to.
