Pêche sur l’herbe – A one shot story

I had this bright idea for a Five Frames piece based around a return to a childhood stomping ground The place I had in mind is a 240 acre area of greenery that forms an as yet unthreatened part of London’s Green Belt. As children in the simpler days of the late fifties and early sixties when the sun always seemed to shine my brother and I used to spend whole days here. Back then it was just somewhere to play but with years comes knowledge. Cray Meadows as it is called was originally the landscaped grounds of two neighbouring 18th century country estates separated by a river. It is now part nature reserve, part recreational open space. With two churches, one for each estate, three bridges spanning the river and plenty of local history to waffle on about all the ingredients for a Five Frames appeared to be oven ready.

A bright idea is one thing; putting into practice is quite another.

From the must-get-round-to-using-this-one-day shelf I chose a first version KW Praktica and a Meyer-Optik 30mm f3.5. Both have their drawbacks, some inherent and some that have crept up on them with age. For instance the Praktica has a pokey little waist level finder and the frame counter has long since ceased to function. The Meyer is pre-set and the coating on the front element has rubbed off in places.

The first attempt last year proved to be a failure. I discovered that because of the growth of foliage and tree cover since my childhood my chosen subjects tended to be either in or have deep shadows. As I’d elected to use Fomapan 100 a tripod would be required to cater for slow shutter speeds. The Praktica doesn’t have a mirror lock as such but gentle pressure on the shutter release will cause the mirror to rise and stay up until further pressure fires the shutter. Use of a cable release loses the ‘feel’ to perform this trick and it all happens at once. The resulting reverberations through the tripod’s legs caused by the mirror snapping up against its time hardened rubber damper would probably have set the needle of any nearby seismometer twitching like billy-o. Camera movement was all too evident in most of the shots although at least a couple proved the Meyer’s worth.

Undaunted, or perhaps just foolhardy, I made another attempt with no tripod but a faster film: Kentmere 400 which has become a firm favourite of mine. This time pools of bright light and much deeper shadows were against me. Nonetheless I bracketed shots and exposed for the highlights, then the shadows and added a compromise for luck but with little hope of decent results.

With a gut feeling that my oven ready Five Frames had again proved as illusive as a politician’s oven ready deal I crossed the last bridge to make my way home.

And there, momentarily laid out in front of me, was a scene that could have lifted straight out of a childhood memory. Without checking the settings I squinted quickly into Praktica’s finder and fired the shutter. Turning away and winding on I realised it was the last frame. So that was it: the spontaneous composition and the film, like my childhood, over in an instant.

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