The Stepping Stones are an ancient crossing point, that span the River Mole, Box Hill, Surrey, and it's apparently a spot you're quite likely to encounter an elusive kingfisher or one of the colony of rosewinged parakeets that has become established nearby.

There was alot of cloud this afternoon but really strong light, I had a few hours spare, so I went in search of this place which I have read about. By the time I battled the (near) rush hour traffic, the sun had gone behind cloud, and it had become quite overcast. The light was quite bright, but behind cloud. Bit dissapointing as strong light would no doubt of made this more dramactic, but cloud cover did give very soft light, which works quite well in black and white.

One of the major problems I have been having with my D70 is exposing with a good tonal balance particularly in strong light. Exposing for the sky often makes the other parts of the image under exposed, and visa versa getting the other elements (i.e foreground) exposed blew out the skies. I had been making bracketed exposures and merging them, but that’s one big pain in the ***, and I often ended up putting off p. processing for another time. So I invested in a cir-polarizing filter, (and looking to get some ND filters too) I’ve not had a chance to use it in strong light yet, but it did allow me to use lower shutter speeds this evening at last light. In conjunction with + ev exposure compensation I got this 30” exposure, which gave a really nice tonal spread, the histogram was well spread out, but still missing some highlights, which I adjusted for in p. processing to bring them up a bit. The long exposure also got that special landscape-esque blurred water effect that all the magazines love so much! :)

I might make some more adjustments to the stepping stones to bring out the mid tone detail a little more and make them a little more prominent in the scene!