Efke PL25M - Oregon

The batch of Efke PL25M 4" x 5" sheet film that I processed back on April 18th included several images from the recent trip to Oregon.  This is a very slow film, rated at 10 iso.  As a result many of these exposures were several seconds or longer in length, particularly when filters were used.  The motion of the surf and even the relatively calm waters became smoothed out by these long exposures.  I think it works well in some of these shots.  I also captured similar images on much faster Tri-X Pan film so when I get around to processing those, it will be interesting to compare...

Spring Photo Weekend

Much like the fall trip, the Monochrome Guild often goes on a spring photo outing.  This event has not been going on for as long, or as regularly as the fall one, but in recent years we have tried to get out annually.  This time around we decided to stay in Harvie Heights, just outside the Banff Park Boundary, near Canmore.  This gave us the option of shooting in the National Parks, or heading south into Kananaskis Country.

I have decided that this year I will lighten my work load a little and take every other Friday off.  I hired at part time office assistant to allow me the freedom to do this.  Friday April 24th was my first scheduled Friday off, and it coincided with the Spring Photo Weekend.  There were four members of the Guild that headed out on Friday morning...  Peter, Mark, Court and myself.  My oldest daughter Hailey, always anxious to miss a day of school, decided to join us.

We got an early start and found ourselves down in the mountains before lunch.  We decided to head into Banff National Park and took a drive down the Bow Valley Parkway.  Perhaps I have just been here too many times before but we really didn't find anything worth shooting.  A brief stop at the Bow River near Castle Junction yielded these two shots...  an Osprey sitting on a nest, and a detail shot of Castle Mountain....

We decided to continue from here over to Yoho National Park, over the border in British Columbia.  As we drove over Kicking Horse Pass the clouds had really settled in and it was snowing heavily.  It looked as though we wouldn't be able to do any serious shooting on this day.  As we dropped down out of the high country, passed the town of Field, and reached our destination along the Kicking Horse River, by the Natural Bridge, it had lightened a little.  We wandered around for a while trying to decide if we could bring the cameras out.  But, a short time later the weather broke and we actually had a great afternoon here.  I shot about 15 sheets of film with my 4x5, all the while trying to teach Hailey how to shoot with my medium format Hasselblad.  It took her a while to adjust to a camera that did not have auto-focus, did not have auto-exposure, and did not have a zoom lens.  She quickly learned that zooming in and out meant changing lenses or moving the camera.  Focus had to be carefully checked with the magnifier of the waist level finder, and exposure determined with a hand held meter, with the reading adjusted to compensate for any filters being used.  I must say the she caught on quite quickly and by the end of the weekend was shooting, mostly on her own, and had rattled off about six rolls of film.  Here is a digital snapshop of the waterfall just above the Natural Bridge.  There was a moose carcass in the shallows of the river just upstream of this spot and we were all a little cautious just in case there were any bears around.  We didn't see any but Mark saw a fresh cougar track in the snow.

After we finished up shooting here we headed back towards Banff.  We made a stop along the Vermilion Lakes, just outside of the Banff townsite.  The clouds were really cool and there was a great spindrift off the rim of Mount Rundle.  It didn't last very long and we only managed a few snapshots of it.  Later we headed into Banff for our evening meal.  In my opinion the best Prime Rib I've ever had is at Bumpers Beef House.  I have been going to this reastaurant every time I am in Banff, for at least 25 years.  It recently was sold to new owners and the original location is closed.  We went to the new one, and the menu was still mostly the same, and they still had a salad bar.  The food was pretty good still, but the atmosphere was just not the same.....

Saturday morning dawned clear and cold and we headed out after breakfast, south into Kananskis Country.  I had a bit of a migraine headache and was feeling somewhat unmotivated.  We drove down the Smith-Dorrien Trail, past Goat Pond and Spray Reservoir.  The water level was really low... lower than I have ever seen before.  But, the mountain runoff hasn't started yet, so hopefully everything fills up in the coming weeks.  As we continued on into Peter Lougheed Provincial Park it warmed up nicely and we made a stop to photograph some flooded tree trunks.  After this stop we headed back up Highway 40 to the Trans Canada, and back to our suite in Harvie Heights.  I had a nap for an hour and finally managed to shake off the headache that had been nagging me all day.  We went out for an early dinner in Canmore to a great Pizza place.  After dinner we headed back into Banff National Park and did some shooting in the evening light, at Bow Falls and then back out at Vermillion Lakes.

The next morning again dawned clear and sunny and this turned out to be the best weather day of the weekend.  Why does that always happen on the day that we have to go home...???  We headed up onto the Minnewanka Road in Banff National Park and did some shooting up at Two Jack Lake.  I was hoping that we could head over to Bankhead, but that section of the loop road is closed for the winter as a wildlife corridor.  After finishing up here we checked out Norquay Meadowns, and made another stop down at Vermillion Lakes, this time at the stumps of the old Beaver Pond.  We made a stop for lunch in Banff and then hit the road for home.  We decided to take the old highway 1A back to Calgary and made a stop at the historic church at Morley.  Like every spring that I have made a stop here, the Prairie Crocus's were in bloom everywhere.  By the time we finished up here it was getting to be late afternoon and we hit the road for home, eventually getting back to Edmonton by about 8:00PM.

Efke PL25M - Jasper Images

The batch of Efke PL25M sheet film that I processed last weekend included four images from Jasper National Park.  These were all taken in November of 2014, during the Fall Photo Weekend.  This is an annual outing with the members of The Monochrome Guild.  In fact, we are just making plans to head out for our annual Spring Photo Weekend.  A few members of the Monochrome Guild will be heading out to Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country for a weekend of hiking and photography.  The forecast is calling for poor weather, cold temperatures and rain turning to snow.  Snow makes for some good images but rain is not particularly desirable.  We will hope for the best...

Waxed my Legs...!!

A few years ago I bought a wonderful wood Ries tripod.  These are made by a small company in Washington State and sold world wide.  These are heavy stable tripods generally preferred by large format photographers, for big view cameras.  They are beautifully made from maple hardwood, and nicely finished.  Although in many ways they have the qualities of a nice piece of furniture, to me it is a tool to be used to create photographs.  I don't go out of my way to abuse mine, but I am afraid it has suffered some rough treatment in recent months.  It endured some blowing sand in Utah during my two recent trips.  The badlands of southern Alberta provided similar conditions and when it got knocked over in the wind there, that didn't help.  It has seen plenty of wear and tear bouncing around in the back of my truck, not to mention numerous times beating through the bush with it.  The legs of the tripod were getting gummed up with grit and dirt and extension was becoming restricted.  This most recent trip out to the Pacific Coast in Oregon contributed yet more sand, and added some salt spray to the mix.  Earlier this week I stripped the tripod apart and cleaned out all the dust and grit as best as I could.  I then used some wood finishing wax and resurfaced all the wooden components of the tripod.  This not only touched up all the wear and weathering that was beginning to show, but now the extension and adjustment of the legs is smooth and clean... just like new.

Efke PL25M

Last weekend I processed a batch of 4" x 5" sheet film.  This was the now discontinued Efke PL25M.  This film is very slow, and I typically expose it at 10 iso.  This was one of the three films that I took with me on the recent trip down to Oregon.  This batch is all relatively recent, dating back to the fall of 2014.  I've only begun to scan the negatives from this batch and this first image dates back to a day trip that Margarit and I took back in October.  Over the coming days I will post some images from the November trip to Jasper with the Monochrome Guild, and some from the recent Oregon trip.  The image I have included here is of an abandoned homestead up in Lamont County.  In my opinion the clear fall sky gives quite a chilling mood to this image...

Busy Weekend

Spring seems to be upon us a little early this year.  It was my 52nd birthday on Friday and I can remember many years when there was still snow on the ground on my birthday.  Not this year... the snow is all but gone.  If you look hard enough you might find a patch of ice somewhere in the shade, mostly where it was piled up from snow removal.  It is very dry and dusty and we could actually use some rain.  It's a little too early for spring to be arriving and the grass is not yet turning green, and the trees are just in the early stages of budding.

I arrived home from work on my birthday to a surprise party... a Mexican Fiesta.  Margarit and the girls had the basement decorated and a bunch of mexican food prepared.  I was rather burnt out from a long busy week and hopefully I was reasonable company.  It was a relatively low key affair with just the family, my Mom, and Margarit's Mom in attendance.

Saturday was pleasantly mild, but there was a very strong blustery wind, much like last weekend.  I ran a few errands and worked on some paperwork around the house.  In the evening we went to visit some friends in the neighborhood.

On Sunday Margarit and I had plans to go out for a day trip.  It was a mostly sunny day, with mild temperatures, and the winds had finally let up.  We offered the girls the opportunity to come along, but they wanted to stay home.  Margarit and I didn't head out until the crack of noon.  We drove up through Elk Island Park and into Lamont County.  At first we didn't find anything particularly interesting.  But, by afternoon we found ourselves up in the Willingdon Hills.  Here we stumbled across a few cool old buildings and spent a few hours exploring and photographing.  I think I came back with about 10 sheets of film exposed in the big view camera, as well as some digital snapshots.  Margarit also did a little shooting... on 35mm film.

We made it back home in time to have supper with the girls, and then everyone eventually settled down for bed... looking forward to the upcoming school week.....

Not quite sure if this guy couldn't figure out how to spell "Observed" or if he couldn't spell "Absurb" but we both got quite the chuckle out of it....  It's almost as though the stains are like a finger, pointed at the highlighted spelling error...!!

Kodak 100 TMX in 510 Pyro

Last Friday, shortly after our return from Oregon, I was itching to process some of my film, and see what sort of results I got....   I pulled the 7 sheets of Kodak 100 TMX that I had shot with ReadyLoad packets.  I added this to the 8 sheets that I had on hand, from the very end of 2014, and the winter of 2015.  I mixed up a batch of Jay DeFehr's 510 Pyro formula that I have been experimenting with, and set about to processing these 15 sheets of 4" x 5" film.  I'm quite happy with the results and will continue to work with this combination.  Some of these have been previously posted to my Flickr account...

Seven of these are from the recent Oregon trip.  Six were taken over the past few months.  I chose not to bother scanning a couple as they were duplicates shots of images that I have already posted.