I have at last made a start shooting for this exercise. For now I have shot only the ford and will follow up with the fall back plans (on which I have had some more thought) later. I made a start now, despite the fact that the weather was quite bad today, to take advantage of the significant flow of water through the ford as a result of very heavy rain overnight. Despite the volume of rain over the last couple of weeks the water level had fallen back to just a couple of inches by yesterday. Today, on the upstream side, the water was almost two feet deep.
Having tried a few different angles I have settled on two, one looking upstream, one down. I will choose between them for the final set (assuming one of the backup plans does not take precedence) once a more substantial body of work has accumulated.
At the time these were taken it was raining (I had to shelter the camera under an umbrella as it is not weathertight!) so the light was quite poor. Exposures were as a result quite long (1.5s for the first, at f/16, ISO 400) which has made the water quite glassy and smooth. Obviously I used a tripod, which I set fairly low to keep some of the road in view in the foreground.
Fortunately, because of the depth of water I did not have to worry about cars coming through. One did approach from the downstream side but wisely turned around and went back!
Just how often I repeat these shots I have yet to decide but I expect it will probably be weekly. I can though be flexible and judge when it is worth revisiting on a daily basis as I walk the dog this way most days and so can see if there have been any noticeable changes before deciding when to come back with a camera.
14 October 2019
Interesting that these last two pairs of photos suggest that the default depth of water in the ford with regular but not too concentratedly heavy rain is about three inches, not something that I have noticed before.
The latest instalment. As with Plan B I think now is the time to stop the regular updating of this post and simply continue to gather shots that can be properly edited later. I will though add more if, for example, we have another flood or other dramatic changes to the scene over the coming months, which is quite likely given the amount of rain we are getting at the moment.
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 