Week 36: Harkness Gardens

A trip to see the beautiful gardens at Harkness State Park before Fall threatens to turn them all into various shades of brown.  The mansion itself did not figure too prominently in my shots, but it is quite large and stately.  It is one of the nicest parks in the state, and all the gardens are tended by diligent volunteers.  There is tidal marsh area with nesting ospreys (I’ll need to go back with a long telephoto), along with a small beach reserved for strictly fishing (no swimming allowed).  I was here earlier in the project taking photos of a British car show, but I wanted to come back to try to get some garden shots.

I brought along my Leitz-Minolta CL with my Voigtlander Color-Skopar 21mm/f4 lens.  This particular lens is much wider than the viewfinder, and I haven’t gotten an auxiliary viewfinder, so all the compositions are basically guesses.  I did learn from using this lens earlier in the project that it is best to shoot directly at the horizon or the results will be more distorted than expected. I loaded it up with Portra 160 and home-developed in a C-41 press kit.  A few of the exposures were a bit off, which I suspect was because a cloud rolled over the sun just as I was shooting.  The light meter on my CL is not operational, so I was using my handheld Gossen.  I probably should have adjusted 1/2 a stop or so–with this lens, by f8 most everything is in focus, and many of these were at f16 or f22.  Lots of ‘leading lines’ comps in this set.

I did a bit of cleanup of some home-developed boo-boos, and a some slight color adjustment, but nothing major.  I love the colors this lens can capture.