(aka, my first outdoor LF experience!)
Right,
I sorted the Dogmar 150/4,5 aperture-less lens into a lens panel, and the Korona is pretty complete.
Decided to brave it for the first time ever - going out with a large format camera! It wouldn't be so bad if I was a few miles from my home, but going round the back felt a bit like cheating. I carried the camera and tripod, plus dark cloth, one DDS and my Leningrad 8 around to the small stream with steep banks. Propped everything up, even placed the tripod legs in the muddy stream! Yep! The whole shebang!
Turns out the stream looks rubbish on the GG, so I wandered off.
Remembering there's a field a few minutes away -in fact it's one of many in Lydiard- I was considering it as backdrop for some portraits one time. Seemed private enough I could take someone there for outdoor nudes or something. Maybe that would be nice?
So I get to the field, a whopping great 2 minutes walk away. I rehearse in my mind the "I'm a student, just taking a photo, if you want a print then I'll bring you one" speech in case I come across a farmer.
Trundling into the field I think, "Jackpot!! It's full of horses!" forgetting my only lens was a shutter-less, aperture-less 150mm, and it was getting on 7:30pm pre-dusk, with Ortho film in the camera
Set everything up again... The horses (probably 30, maybe more maybe less, a whole load of them anyhow) look like ants on the GG, so I wander along the perimeter of the field, with a thorny thick bush on my right hand side and nowhere to run except TOWARD the horses.
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Okay before I continue, the last experience I can remember involving horses was during school about 5 years ago, being forced to groom and clean up the muck, then attempting to ride one around a small pen. My horse decided to lean and try and eat the daisies and flowers and consistently threw me off balance. I was scared to tears. My fragile teen persona dancing on the edge, with a gentle beast that wanted to freak me out as much as possible!
Oh, and my mother once told me a story that when she was in her teens, she was chased and cornered by a herd of cows.
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With that in mind, even entering a field full of black and white and brown horses was a step higher on my fear factor. Calm breathing all the way, don't be more than 1 minute's walk from the fence.
So I tip-toe my way into the open space, towards the group of horses. A young'un slowly gallops toward me, mother in tow. I start to walk backwards, to avoid the cute quadruped from befriending me and incurring the mother's wrath. Remember, I'm no horse tamer.
It gets bored a few yards from me and clears off. So I wander back into the clear space toward the herd.
One quite white horse, with a few spots of dark brown in places, moves closer, but not towards me, more to feed on the grass. I make way for it, but try to maneuver myself, it was the perfect distance to get in the frame, with a shutter speed of half a second and seemingly great composition - fair sized horse in foreground, herd of horses making up the horizon.
It starts tapping its hind foot against the ground. I wait for maybe 5 taps and glance to see a larger brown male, with flared ankles jogging my way.
I hold one hand out calming saying "woahhh..." (cmon, my only experience of horses is cowboy films and a repressed teen memory!). It backs me up toward the tall hedge as I slowly, yet quite speedily, re-trace my steps; I was far from the gate and known freedom however.
My heart is racing!
I keep thinking, "can I drop the tripod, get my hand through the handle on the Korona, and duck and roll out of the way of the horse if it charges? Can I avoid the many dung patties I've already stepped in whilst staring this horse in the eyes!?"
The horse stares at me and it calmly walks right up. I stroke its nose, uttering gentle words and showing I was no threat. Heart in my throat, I can feel my body shaking, my knees screaming at me "hey are we gonna run here or am I gonna buckle and see you collapse??". A few moments pass, but the old cliche stands, it felt like an eternity.
I can't remember the next moment, but the next thing I know the horse is trotting to join the herd again.
I set the camera up one last time, decide that I REALLY don't think I'll get a good photo, not from that distance, and not with a fear of being trampled.
I wander out the field.
Further along there's a trenched area by a drain, and a felled broken tree that looks like an arch. I make do with my weak-nerves and set up and photograph it. The exposure was now 8 seconds. Light was going fast anyway.
I can see the horses galloping past, the perfect distance away, but this time on the other side of a stream and fence.
A couple horses look at me as they go past. One really nice young black horse has an extended look at me, I make "tick" sounds with my tongue through my teeth. I go to pick up my tripod, it makes a metallic clacking sound as it jolts on the dry mud - it spooked the poor horse!
I can't win.
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