My first really successful UV image in the sense that I managed the technical challenges and was able to achieve what I had set out to accomplish. Seen in hindsight something absolutely hopeless as far as UV goes, because I didn't realise as a novice in the field what should have been obvious, namely, I could not achieve the tonality of my selected scene the way I requested it to be. The sky should have been rendered bright not dark as I envisioned.
This learning exercise took place at the lake nearby, so I used a period of nice sunny summer days to nip over to my selected motif and photographed it every day at the same time, whilst keeping copious notes of the settings and exposure data. Remember this was film, no EXIF ... Then dropped the film at my lab and picked it up later, so I could adjust the details for next days' tribulations thus slowly iterating towards the level of command we now take for granted of UV photography.
This day, everything was perfect, some wind to buffet the lake surface, some clouds to give intermittent sun rays, and I felt confident all systems were good to go. Then, I detected I only had a few frames left on my last roll of Fuji RTP film, and to make the situation even worse, the sun broke out of clouds and threatened to blow out the sky. In desperation I pulled a 100 Kroner bill from my wallet and used it as a makeshift graded ND filter. During 30-40 sec exposures you have the opportunity to influence the outcome
Well, I ended up with this picture that was pure UV, but not in the technical correct sense of UV. Did I care? Not at the time, and not now either. It was formative for my perception of what nature photography entails.
