Old Stump - Helmdon Churchyard

Taken with a Walker Titan SF and 150 Symmar. Film is the last of my Fuji Acros 100 Film Pack stock, very convenient but not very environmentally friendly, lots of waste packaging. Nearly all used up now. Rated at 50 asa and processed in Rodinal 1 to 50 for 10 minutes. I used Zone metering and reduced the recommended development time by 30% - it is a nice negative and I hope I can do it justice in the darkroom with a print. The film itself is really nice and not subject to large amounts of Reciprocity correction.
 
I think the stump is somewhat lost with its surrounding tones been similar, also maybe if you had used a wider aperture to throw the distracting back ground OOF, or maybe a tiny amount of front standard back tilt to get a more narrow DOF.
 
I worked hard to get front to back sharpness in this shot and it seems counter intuitive to do otherwise. If we get some good light in the next few days I will though go back and give it a try. I do however have another image where your comment re front to back sharpness is probably even more appropriate, so I may give that a revisit as well. In 35mm I frequently use full aperture to throw out the background and give the image a 3D pop so I do see where you are coming from, Thanks Martin for the comment.
 
Perhaps it’s the angle of the sun. The top of the stump is fully illuminated and its tone matches the rugged side-lit gravestone behind. If you’d waited half an hour or so, the sun would have moved round and the stone would have been in shadow, like the ones in the background, while the top of the stump would still have been in full sun.
It’s possible that moving left or right may have helped but you were there and we weren’t.
 
I agree that it is a pity that the left side of the stump merges in with the grass behind it. But I am more bothered about the tops of the gravestones being too near the top of the picture. This is the first thing I noticed when I first saw the picture.
Regarding sharpness, I prefer everything to be sharp -front to back - as you have achieved.

Alan
 
If the grass is green, a filter might help.
I too like to see overall sharpness. It’s a personal matter of course. If this were simply a picture of the stump, it might work well, but it’s a picture of a place with the stump serving as anchor point in the composition, rather than being the main subject.
 
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