Algonquin

Autumn colours along the Oxtongue River, Oxtongue Rapids Park, Ontario, Canada. 27 September 2016 Enjoying a nostalgic trip to the location of the summer camps of his youth, David Noton has the perfect opportunity to experiment among the lakes and woodlan

Algonquin: a name to stir the memories. Every kid growing up in Ontario is sent on summer camp here at least once in their childhood. I certainly was. Building shelters in the woods, canoeing the lakes, grilling hotdogs over open fires – there are worse ways to spend a summer. Now, almost 50 years later, I’m back. Yep, unrestrained misty-eyed nostalgia is sure to be a feature of this trip; I’ve given into it already.

The first Algonquin shoot is not strictly an Algonquin shoot. We’re exposing at Oxtongue Rapids, a stretch of rushing river recommended by the lady whose cabin we’re renting just outside the park. This looks like a good place to start.

Straight out of the car, I spot one splash of scarlet maple in amongst the otherwise still green foliage that overhangs the rapids – and that’s us captivated for the morning. The striking simplicity of the colour contrast makes the image. I experiment with different lens options, but settle for the unusual combination of my fast 85mm prime lens used wide open with a polarizer to darken the reflections off the water and to saturate the colours in the vegetation, plus a Little Stopper filter. The maximum aperture of a gaping f/1.2 gives the minimal depth of field I’m after, but the dense Stopper allows an exposure slow enough to smooth the water. I don’t believe I’ve ever done this before, but there’s a first time for everything.

And so the morning passes. Eventually the sun burns through and it’s game over, but the combination of scarlet leaves overhanging rushing water has kept us busy for hours, and we’ve barely moved a few hundred metres. As always, paring compositions down to the bare minimum has paid dividends, and with virtually no breeze, I’ve been able to render leaves pin-sharp while using exposures of several seconds long. All good fun. This will be our lot for the next week – heaven, really.

A few days later, we’re hiking along the shore of one of the many lakes here. It’s a grey day, perfect for messing about in the woods. It’s good to be on foot, trusty Gitzo on the shoulder, stopping every few minutes to do yet more pictures of leaves. Wendy asks what makes me stop and extend my legs here, what makes this tree different from any other? I couldn’t say; some combination of graphic simplicity, colour and backdrop, maybe? However, there is something very satisfying and therapeutic about having the time to indulge my craft so. As usual, minutes turn into hours when bonding with nature. The pictures may or may not stand the test of time, but it’s good for the soul.

As I frame up another leafy capture, I have the familiar decisions to make: do I go for deep or minimal depth of field, and do I try to capture all the leaves frozen sharp or go for impressionistic motion blur? Mother Nature usually determines the latter; there’s no fighting her. If there’s a breeze, I might as well prolong exposures with neutral density filters. But this morning, with just a gentle breeze blowing, I can try both. Firstly, I can render my leaves sharp with all the crisp detail that the 50-plus megapixels of my 5DS R’s sensor can deliver. Then I stop down and fit the 0.9 ND filter to use a long 20-second exposure. The monitor glows. It’s certainly colourful, but is it a blurry mess or does the motion contrast with the sharp immobile grey backdrop to create perceptive art? I suspect the former. It’s always worth experimenting, though, even if the shot doesn’t work. I can still, even after all these years, learn something from the attempt.