Photoshoot: Shooting The Redwoods in the Otways with my NEW Fujifilm X-H2

How long it has been since I’ve been on a purposeful landscape shoot, I’m too embarrassed to say. I have been telling so many people I’d love to see the majestic Redwoods in the Otways, I simply never just jumped in the car and went.

Aside from the fact that I really wanted to test my new Fujifilm X-H2, I was simply running out of excuses for not going.

And there was a little stress to be honest. I had just opened the boot to my car to find that I had indeed forgotten to pack my tripod. An absolute fatal mistake, I thought at the time.

But the silence of the tall forest, there was no room for stress, for situations that you could not change. I’ll just figure it out, I thought to myself. It’ll be fine.

Two hours later, I opened the car door and was greeted with the air so cool and fresh. I forgot how clean the air in the forest can be. It was so incredibly quiet.

Apart from the unfortunate rumbles of logging trucks that crossed the creek and ebbed up the road deeper into the Otways, every other sound was amplified – the sound of my boot as it hit the muddy ground as I got out of the car.

It was midday when I arrived and despite the sun being well and truly up for hours, it was only beginning to kiss the dry redwood tendrils on the forest floor amongst these majestic trees. It was simply, well, unarming. I could feel the stress just drop to the forest floor from the first steps I took in between the enormous tree trunks.

It is a place where I found that I simply couldn’t convey the magic of this place when I looked through the viewfinder. I wasn’t disappointed, it was just the beauty of such a place felt so impossible to capture in a way. It was so beautifully overwhelming.

Now I’ve never been a great fan at ALL of turning up the ISO dial on any cameras I’ve ever owned. Grain and unnecessary noise is something to avoid when I’m shooting homes and architecture for work. But now, sans my humble (I’m still shaking my head about it as I type this), I had to turn it up. For a girl that shoots at ISO 125 and 160, it was an adjustment, to say the least, to be shooting at 10 times that!

As the X-H2 is now my new workhorse, the ISO is not in its usual spot as per the other dial-oriented members of Fujifilm’s X family.

In fact I was rather worried about making the move away from the dial set up that had become second nature to me whilst shooting.

But to my surprise, being able to set up my own custom programs according to the settings used for the variety of situations I shoot, has been one of the easiest things.

Having four programs tuned into different scenarios I shoot for has been an incredible time saver.

So back to using the X-H2 in the Redwoods. I really didn’t have much to worry about.

The IBIS worked really well, even with my favourite lens (my XF 35mm F2) attached. What did surprise me was using my (relatively) new XF10-24mm for ‘portraits’ of the forest floor.

It has real simpatico with the X-H2 and it was a new experience for me using that out in a landscape, let alone shooting the wonders at my feet.

Even though I had my wide angle, I simply couldn’t capture the redwood’s entirety in one shot. They really are that tall. But where the sun had made it over the ridge of the valley, fingers of light shone light soft spotlights through the shadowy forest.

As the time skipped by, so did the direction of light and softer dappled light brought focus to the beauty that lay beneath my feet on the forest floor.
Layers upon layers of leaves created a spongy soft path to walk on between these titans of trees.
After focusing on the floor for a while, different shapes, sizes, colours and tones became apparent, precious little compositions created simply by falling leaves.

Every now and then a thick root pierced the leafy skin of the floor and like a finger arching a knuckle, a sign at just how far the roots of these majestic trees spread out across the forest.

The light hit them in such a way it was like they were mean to be found. These compositions the X-H2 really relished and excelled in.

I remember when I’ve used non-IBIS bodies in the past, such a composition and with the delicate light, would have been a real challenge to capture and it would have involved some serious camera shake and/or some serious noise reduction work in Lightroom in post-production.

Either way, not the kind of image you’d want to work with to produce a possible print down the road, right? But I loved what the X-H2 was able to do.
No more fear of low light for this landscape photographer!

To be honest I could have stayed there allllll afternoon and continued snapping away as the light gently moved across the valley casting longer and softer shadows on the forest floor, but I had to make the 2 hour road trip back to Ocean Grove before it got dark. Alas I made my way back to the car, and hit the road.

On the road home I stopped off at Weeaproinah, a spot just down the road that I had happily photographed a few years back beckoned. A farming enclave ensconced amongst the steep hills and valleys adjacent to the forest.

This was just a little taster of my first real landscape shoot with the X-H2 but I’m looking forward to really stretching its legs, so to speak, on a possible interstate road trip next month. And I will definitely make sure I pack the tripod this time – I’ll make it the first thing I put in the car!

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve shared something with you, but hopefully I’ll be able to post more over the coming months!

Much Love