Moods in green

Last week I walked familiar terrain on the outskirts of my town as I dropped off my daughter for horseriding. As she rode on Diesel or Lana, i walked the surroundings. This time my eyes were caught by that deeper green that comes as summer in Europe matures in August.

Riding into the zone

Riding into the zone

Green to many represents ‘fresh’, ‘nature’, ‘life’. Nature also has its deeper and darker side; less fresh if you will; nature is everything and therefore contains everything. Whereas I am saddened by the prospect of an ending to the growth of summer - and the reminder of aging - I have respect for its flora and fauna showing some age in its foliage and feathers. More than a metaphor for our lives, it is the seasonal cycle of life. And we are so abundantly made a witness to it in the temporal regions.

So here is mature-summer green!

Nesting ground in the borderlands

Nesting ground in the borderlands

On the technical side, I experimented with my own take on the Fujifilm Classic Neg. film simulation. Fuji is renowned for its color reproduction even in the digital age by taking us back to the characteristics of film rolls like Velvia, Acros, and now Superia. I love the experimenting, the grading, the feel, the nostalgia of it! It is a prized premium of my Fuji camera’s that allow me to set a film look and shoot jpeg with no or minimal post-processing.
And now there is the Classic Neg. Film simulation with the introduction of the X-Pro3 (and firmware upgrades of the GFX50/100 camera’s). A great artist and source of new Fuji developments that I and many others follow is Jonas Rask who writes about it here. I don’t have the latest X-Pro3 or GFX50R camera so I had to emulate the look in post for which I used the settings suggested by The Magical Landscape here (with some personal sauce of my own).

I love the deep greens and slight hints of aqua blue in the shades and yellow in the highlights (all pretty subtile)! All I ask for now is for this film simulation to come to the X-T3 (and X-E3?) camera’s in the form of firmware updates in the near future (Fuji please!).

All photo’s were taken with the Fuji X-T3 and either the 56mm f/1.2 or 16mm f/1.4 lens.

Separation

Separation