It was just before summer that I suddenly had an idea: paper boats! I wanted to do something with paper boats.
How I get these silly ideas? Associative thinking; the process of linking one thought to another. Like stringing beads to create jewellery. You start with a random thought like water, outdoors, colour, diy, travel, movement,… and you let your thought jump around, from one thing to another until a pattern appears and all these elements connect into an idea.

So, paper boats, that should be an easy one, right? Something you will always know how to do. Like riding a bike. But I found myself staring at a white page, not knowing what to do with it. So this ‘adult’ had to ask Mr Google for help. Even then it took me a few attempts to create a decent boat. How on earth is it possible that this used to be easy-peasy?
(I think my inner child will be utterly upset :-p )
But the good thing is that I had multiple boats to work with- which I needed because the thin paper didn’t last very long.

I had an idea about the ideal spot that I wanted to find. At first, this was a lake (and maybe I’ll try that later) but with autumn taking off, some rocks and reflections seemed much more interesting to work with.
So off to search for a river. But that seemed not so easy. We have lots of lakes but not so many rivers. There are some creeks connecting the lakes but they are not on maps and often hidden in the forest. Some were almost completely dry, others I couldn’t reach in a safe way. And one I sneaked out very quietly.

The water at this place was unusually low compared to the other times I visited or photographed it. A bit curious I walked up stream to take a look and what I found surprised me. There was a dam holding back most of the water and the trees were cut in an odd way (if it would be a human). Since I was there with Mogwai and I suspect a beaver family living there, I quickly left.

And suddenly, after trying many roads I found what I was looking for: a small creek, easy to access with Mogwai, a part with shallow water and rocks almost as black as coal. The fallen trees and bushes on the sides created an interesting play of reflection and colours in the background.

For this shoot, I brought 3 different lenses with me: 85mm 1.8, 50mm 1.8 and a Twist 60 that I got from Lensbaby to test. This Twist 60 is a manual focus lens with a special swirling bokeh effect. More about this lens later!
The ISO was 200, shutter speed depending on the lens- but the average 1/800s and the aperture was something between 2.2 and 2.8. The Twist 60 does not give your camera any information but I know I prefer to shoot with the aperture as wide as possible so that should be f2.5.

When all the boats have sunken,… it’s time to go home 🙂

PS: I edited this series with Lightroom for which I’m creating some new presets inspired by autumn coming up. If you’re not familiar with Lightroom yet: this program gives you the opportunity to save your edits as a preset (or buy them) and then with one click apply the same mood to an entire series.
To get started I wrote a blog post about the Lightroom basics.

Let me know what you think!

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