Cottonwood Trunks

Here's one from the recent trip down to the badlands at the beginning of October.  This one, of a couple dead cottonwood trees, was taken from the side of the road, down along the bottom of the Red Deer River valley, south of East Coulee.  This was in the early evening as my friend Rob and I were returning to East Coulee after a rainy day of shooting out on the prairie.  The dead trunks were wet from the days rain, and offered a nice contrast against a tapestry of fall leaves, and the badlands slope on the far shore of the river.  This one was taken with my Ebony view camera and my Fujinon 400mm lens.  It was taken on Kodak T-Max 100 film, processed in 510 Pyro developer.  I quite like the soft mood of this image and will seriously consider taking the time to make an exhibition print from this negative.

Blast from the Past

Over the past couple of weeks I have attempted to catch up on developing my backlog of unprocessed film.  Most of this is from 2015 and 2016, but there are still a couple dozen sheets from 2014.  Most of the old stuff is Ilford Delta and Kodak Tri-X that requires development in PMK.  As this developer works best with constant agitation, I find it well suited to the Jobo processor.  A few weeks ago I dug mine out of storage and set it up to begin processing all of this film.  There are over 100 sheets of Kodak Tri-X alone, so this will be an ongoing process for some time to come.  As I work through processing all of this stuff I will also be scanning and posting some of the better images.  Many are duplicates of previous images that were taken on other types of film and processed in other developers.  But some are new... so at the very least I will be sharing those.

This particular one goes back to November of 2014.  This was the annual Fall Photo Weekend, an annual outing with some of my friends from the Monochrome Guild.  This is an Edmonton-based group of film photographers that I found over a decade ago.  We get together casually about 10 times a year to discuss photography, share our work, and work on group projects.  One of our major projects is a fall outing every year, usually to the mountains, where we get away for a few days to make photographs.  This particular image was taken with my Ebony 4x5 view camera on Kodak Tri-X Pan film.  I exposed it at 400 iso and gave plus development in PMK.  PMK is a staining pyro based developer created by California photographer Gordon Hutchings.  I find that many of my best negatives and those that more often than not get printed for exhibition, were created with this combination.  This particular shot shows some sand patterns created by small plants in the blowing wind.  The wind is constant here on the dunes along Jasper Lake in Jasper National Park.

50,000 Page Views

The counter on my blog today hit 50,000 pageviews.  This is all time, since I started posting about six years ago.  I typically see about 1000 pageviews per month.  This is up and down a little, depending on how active I am in updating.  This past month there has been a real surge in interest, with over 4500 page views in October alone, mostly out of the United States.  Not sure exactly where this is all coming from, but it seemed to start when I began posting all my recent images from Mt. Assiniboine.  Perhaps this is just coincidental...?  Whatever the reason, I am pleased that so many people keep stopping by to check out my work.  Hopefully I can continue to present meaningful and interesting images to keep all these visitors interested.

A Couple More

Here are two more images from Mt. Assiniboine.  I don't feel that these are quite as strong as some of those that I've previously posted... but they're not bad.  This first one was taken on our last full day at the Lodge.  This was the day of overcast skies, cool weather, and on and off drizzle.  We started out the day with a group hike up to the Niblet.  Later Margarit and I found our way down to a couple of waterholes in a meadow.  This shot shows one of those waterholes against a backdrop of fall larches and Sunburst Peak.  It's too bad the sky was so empty but perhaps that could be cropped out somewhat in a print.  This one was shot on September 17th at about 2:00 in the afternoon.  I used my 110mm lens and a #25 Red Filter.  This was Kodak T-Max 100 developed in 510 Pyro.

I've included this next image because it was a first attempt at something different for me...  Obviously this is Mt. Assiniboine.  After dinner on September 18th, as we walked back to our cabin, Margarit and I noticed that the moon was rising and that the illumination on the peaks was quite intense.  I set up my camera on the front deck of our cabin, and used a 200mm Nikkor M lens to key in on Assiniboine, with a bit of Magog Lake and the surrounding peaks visible through the trees.  This was shot on Fuji Neopan Acros 100 film, processed in Rodinal developer 1:50.  I took a spot meter reading of the moonlight that was glowing of the snowcapped peak of Assiniboine.  Based on that I made a guess as to what the exposure might need to be.  Then as the last glow of daylight in the sky began to fade, I realised that a little more exposure might be in order.  I ended up using a aperture of F16.0 and a shutter speed of 45 minutes.  This obviously showed the movement in the overhanging tree branches but yielded an image that is quite different.  You can see a couple of faint star trails in the sky... or maybe those were passing aircraft... not sure.  Though I do seem to remember seeing a bright star in the location of one of these trails.

Last of the Good Ones...

I think this is the last of the really strong images from Mt. Assinboine.  I have more, but they are not compositionally as strong.  I will post a batch of the out takes in the coming days, once I finish scanning them all.  They are OK, and provide a little bit of a feel of the place, but are not exhibition quality images.

This one was once again taken on September 16th during the hike up to Wonder Pass.  This was by far the most productive day of the trip.  This image was taken near the end of the hike, as we were on our way back down to our cabin.  It was at about 3:00 in the afternoon.  I noticed these grasses in a flooded meadow beside Gog Creek, with Nub Peak visible in the background.  I used my Schneider Super Symmar XL 110mm lens to capture this scene.  This is a moderately wide lens for large format, and roughly equivalent to a 35mm lens used with small format roll film or with full frame digital SLR.  I added a #25 Red Filter to increase contrast and create some drama in the sky, and separation of the clouds.  Exposure was at F22.0 and a shutter speed of 1/4 second.  Development was in 510 Pyro.  I'm really pleased with this composition and think it is among the best images of the trip.

Gog Lake... and a couple more good ones...

Seems that many of my best shots from the Assiniboine trip were taken on September 16th.  This day the skies were clear and the light spectacular.  Margarit and I set out on our own and hiked up along Gog Creek to Wonder Pass.  We were on our own as the others had set off in other directions.  It was a spectacular day that I will long remember.  This particular shot is of Gog Lake, at the outlet, where Gog Creek continues on its journey down to Magag Lake.  Shot through some shoreline larches, just beginning to turn color, with a backdrop of Naiset Peak to the right, and The Towers to the left.  This one was on Kodak T-Max 100 and was shot with my 110mm lens.  I used a #8 Yellow filter to lighten up the fall larches, and to create a little separation in the sky. I have one or two more strong images from this trip, which I will be posting in the coming days.  I'm quite pleased that this trip yielded about a half dozen really strong images, worthy of exhibition quality prints.  I will continue with processing the last of my negatives, all of which a duplicates of the ones I have already processed and posted.  I thought this would be a once in a lifetime experience and something that I could check off my bucket list.  Now I'm thinking I want to return at some point in the future, and build on that experience.  If anyone reading this has the opportunity to experience Mt. Assiniboine... I encourage you to do it...!!

Winter Hockey - Games 5 to 7...

I can't believe that we are already seven games into the "winter" hockey season.  Perhaps that's why we've been blessed with all the snow lately!  The guys played Game 5 while I was away down in the badlands at the beginning of October and won over the Benders by a score of 11-3.  Since I've returned we played two more games, and unfortunately the Renegades lost both.  The then third place Mighty Ducks throttled us on October 6 by a score of 12-1.  Then we moved on to play the first place and undefeated Griffins on October 11.  We played a much better game but still lost, this time by a score of 7-3.  We are still in second place in our division with a record of 5 wins and 2 losses.  Game eight of the regular season is scheduled for later tonight.  Hopefully we can turn things around and start a new winning streak...!

Treeline

I have finished up processing most of my negatives from the recent Assiniboine trip.  I think there are something like four T-Max 100 negatives left to go.  I need to wait until I shoot some more of this film, so that there is a large enough batch to justify mixing up the chemistry.  I still have about 20 sheets of Fuji Neopan Acros left to do, but these are basically just duplicates of the T-Max ones.  Minor differences of shutter speed and filtration, so perhaps some will be slightly stronger than some of the images I have shared so far...

Over this past weekend, with the onset of more snowy and winter like conditions, I retreated to my darkroom and continued processing my backlog.  This weekend I set up my Jobo Processor and began running some Ilford Delta 100 and Kodak Tri-X Pan in PMK developer.  Most of this stuff dates back to 2014 and 2015, but there is a little bit of newer stuff mixed in.  I've already processed 40 sheets of film, and there are still about a hundred to go.  Once these are done, I will return to the last of the stuff from Mt. Assiniboine.  In the mean time there are a few more negatives that I have processed and scanned that are worth a closer look.  I think this is one of them....

This is a shot taken at tree line on the shoulder of the Nublet.  Assiniboine in visible to the left, and the dark face of Sunburst Peak dominates the right center.  In the foreground there are some outcropping rocks, and a scattering of alpine larches, just beginning to turn color.  This was taken with a 150mm lens on my Ebony 4x5 view camera.  This is considered a normal lens for this format.  I used a #8 Yellow filter to brighten up the larches a little, to intensify the shadows slightly, and to darken the sky a bit and create a bit of separation from the clouds.  I think it worked fairly well.

I've been getting a lot of positive feedback on my recently posted Assiniboine Panorama image and I think that negative will be brought out in the coming weeks to try and achieve a fine print.  I'll see what sort of response this image gets.

I also have about 20 sheets of color transparency film that I shot on the Assiniboine trip.  While I have the Jobo processor set up I will also mix up some E-6 chemistry and process these.  

Krummholz

From the Oxford English Dictionary...

Krummholz [noun]:  stunted windblown trees growing near the tree line on mountains.  Origin:  early 20th century, German, literally meaning crooked wood.

These two shots are from the recent trip to Mt. Assiniboine.  I can't decide which I like best... or even if I like either...  These were taken on Saturday September 17th at about 11:00 in the morning.  This was our last full day spent in the area,  The two previous days had been sunny and warm but this one turned out to be cool, overcast and drizzly.  It was really blustery and windy up on the exposed edge of the Niblet, the spot where these shots were taken from.  Sunburst Lake is visible on the left, and Sunburst Peak is prominent on the right.  Had it been a clear day, Mt. Assiniboine would have been visible near the center of the image.  On this day the low cloud obscured the high peaks and resulted in some pretty flat light.  I used my Ebony view camera and my Schneider Super Symmar XL 110mm lens to make expose both of these negatives.  This is a slightly wide lens for this format.  The first image was taken on Kodak T-Max 100 film, exposed at 80iso and developed in 510 Pyro.  This staining developer helped to hold down the high values in the sky.  The second images was taken on Fuji Neopan Acros film, exposed at 80iso and developed in Rodinal.  A #8 Yellow filter was added for this shot.  The T-Max image was taken at an aperture of F18.0 and a shutter speed of 1/8 second.  For the Acros image the lens was stopped down and a 1 stop filter factor added, resulting in an exposure of F36.0 at 1 second.  I think I like the way that the long exposure has shown the motion in the krummholz, resulting from the brisk wind that was blowing that day.  I also find it interesting, that aside from the motion, and despite the fact that the exposure given was the same, there is quite a pronounced difference between these two images.

Assiniboine Panorama

Back to showing some of the stronger images from the recent trip to Mt. Assiniboine.  Weather conditions have remained poor here in central Alberta.  We got hit with yet another dump of snow, this time around 4 inches.  Local farmers are struggling as about 1/3 of the crop remains in the fields to be harvested.  This is going to set things back for them at least a couple of weeks.  Also not much opportunity to get out and do anything photographic with such overcast and flat light.  Instead I've been working in the darkroom processing my backlog of film.  This one, in my opinion, is one of the stronger images from Assiniboine.  I shot it with my 4x5 view camera, but cropped it to panoramic proportions.  It was taken on September 15th, with an 80mm lens and a #25 Red Filter.  The red filter eliminates blue light.  Shadows are predominantly blue light reflected from the open sky so these are darkened by the filter, increasing contrast.  Haze is mostly blue and UV light, which is also eliminated with this Red filter, making the distant peaks sharper.  I shot this one on Kodak T-Max 100 film, and processed in 510 Pyro developer.

During our stay up at the lodge Margarit and I shared a dinner table with a group of six ladies.  We got to know them reasonably well over the four days we were there and enjoyed their company.  They were all friends and were out together on the trip to do some hiking.  Four were from Seattle, one from Denver and one from Phoenix.  They were all curious to see some of my images from this trip so I gave them my card with a link to my blog and to my Flickr account.  Hopefully they have found it and are getting a chance to see some of the work that I am posting.

Badlands Snapshots

Here is a selection of snapshots from the trip to the Red Deer River badlands at the beginning of October.  I have begun processing some of the large format negatives from this trip, together with the remaining negatives from the Mt. Assiniboine trip.  I will continue to post these every few days, as I get time to scan them.

Falls at Wonder Pass

I am returning to posting some of my stronger images from the September trip to Mt. Assiniboine.  With the onset of winter weather here in Alberta on our Thanksgiving Long Weekend, I have mostly been working in the darkroom processing film, and scanning negatives.  I've started processing a few from the trip last weekend down to the badlands, as well as the Assiniboine stuff.  I have most of the T-Max 100 negatives now processed, with just a handful remaining.  I have also started on the duplicate images that I shot on Fuji Neopan Acros 100.  These were the only two films that I had available in the now discontinued ReadyLoad format, and thus the only films that I brought along on the trip.  I have both versions of this image processed and thought the Acros one was slightly stronger.  It showed slightly better detail and tonality both at the low end of the scale, in the shadows, and in the highlights.  This little waterfall was brightly backlit with the sun immediately behind and above the falls, as I captured these images.

This is a small waterfall on the upper reaches of Gog Creek, up near the continental divide at Wonder Pass.  The peak that is visible in the background is Wonder Peak.  My previously posted shot of the Eddy was taken just above this little waterfall, not more than about 100 feet from this spot.  After I took this image, and the duplicate, Margarit and I sat down to have our lunch.  We looked at each other as we began unpacking our lunches and I commented to Margarit... "this probably isn't very bright".  There was evidence in multiple places all over the hillside above us, where bears had been digging.  Down by the creek we were concealed and somewhat captive in the little valley.  If a bear came upon us over the ridge, we would have been trapped.  We decided to move a little further up into the meadow above the falls and had our lunch there.  We never did see any bears on this day, but had a wonderful afternoon exploring up in this high country.  We were near the treeline... the alpine larches were turning color... and it was a beautiful, clear fall day.

This image was taken with my Schneider Super Symmar 80mm lens, which is a wide angle lens for 4" x 5" large format.  I used a #25 Red Filter to increase contrast.  I did my best to shade the front of my lens with my hand, trying to avoid any glare or lens flare from the backlight.  The negative was processed in Rodinal developer, diulted 1:50, for 11:00 minutes at 24C.  I think it worked pretty well.

Happy Thanksgiving...

Look what we got for Thanksgiving... and a big helping of it too.  The rain showers began to turn to snow on Friday evening and it continued through the day on Saturday and into Saturday evening.  Usually we don't get this much snow so early in the season, here in central Alberta.  There was heavy snow in the mountains and foothills this week.  The southeastern corner of the province along with the southern portion of Saskatchewan got dumped on with up to 2 feet in places.  Seems more like Christmas than Thanksgiving.  Hopefully it warms up and the snow disappears before it stays for the winter.  We weren't ready and still have a bunch of yard work to do before winter, including blowing out the water lines of our underground sprinkler.

Two turkey dinners this weekend, one with my family and a second with Margarit's.....

Fall Badlands Trip

Last weekend I attempted to make a trip down to the remote badlands of Southern Alberta.  I met up with my friend Rob Michiel, who had travelled out from his home in Vernon, BC.  Rob and I have been friends for about a decade now and have very similar interests photographically.  He and I put together the Procession West exhibition, which has been touring galleries in Western Canada for about three years now.

I left work a couple hours early on Friday September 30th and headed down to the shop in East Coulee.  Rob met up with me there.  The weather forecast was not great for the weekend and in fact it rained a lot that evening and overnight.  We stayed in my trailer, with plans to head further south the next morning.  When we got up in the morning it was heavily overcast and raining yet more.  We decided it was not worthwhile to consider driving several hours further south, with the potential of not being able to get out and do any hiking.  We agreed that it would be better to stay at East Coulee and explore the Red Deer River badlands instead.  

I was planning on putting my trailer in my shop for the winter at the end of the weekend.  So, that morning we backed it in, hooked up to power, and used that as our base for the weekend.  I had a couple of extra days booked off work so we had ample opportunity to get outdoors and were hopeful that the weather would improve.  

That first day, Saturday October 1st, it was still raining, with waves of showers passing through the area from the south west.  We decided to take a drive out onto the prairie to the east, as the badlands were just too wet and muddy to consider any hiking.  We drove around hoping to find some old farm buildings or something, but eventually had to settle on a corn field.  In the soft overcast light the textures of the cornstalks would hopefully yield some interesting detail shots.

The next morning dawned clear and sunny and we set out with the cameras after breakfast.  Everything was still pretty wet and muddy from all the rain, but we set out nonetheless.  Our first stop was a few miles up the road at the Hoodoos Recreation Area.  Despite the late time of the season there were still quite a few tourists around.  We set up and photographed some of the badlands a short distance away from the Hoodoo viewing platforms.  The formations were being nicely modelled by the clear morning light.  We spent the better part of the day here before eventually heading further up the valley.  We checked out the badlands at the Morrin Bridge and then eventually made our way back south to Horse Thief Canyon.  Although it was clear, there wasn't a lot of wind, and the temperature was pretty cool.  The badlands just weren't drying off all that much and we had to be really careful about where we walked.  We spent the rest of the afternoon shooting in Horse Thief before heading back to the trailer in the evening.

The next day was Monday and Rob needed to be on his way, so he hit the road after breakfast.  I still had a couple of days off work so I stuck it out on my own.  I ended up shooting down in the Cottonwoods along Willow Creek for the better part of the day.  In the late afternoon I took a drive around some backroads, just exploring and getting more familiar with the area.  That evening I met up with my business partner Frank and his wife Chris and we had a nice visit and dinner together.

The next morning was basically a chore day for me.  This was Tuesday October 4th and I needed to be back home that evening, and back in the office the next day.  Frank gave me a hand to manoeuvre the trailer over into the back corner of the shop for winter storage.  I drained the water and sewer tanks, disconnected the batteries, and unloaded all the supplies.  By early afternoon everything was packed away for the season and I hit the road for home, arriving back in Edmonton just after supper time.

Now it is Thanksgiving, and I have another long weekend.  We woke up this morning to snow on the ground and more coming down.  It seems way too early for this so hopefully it disappears again for a while.  With the poor weather I retreated down to the darkroom to work on processing some film and scanning some negatives.  I have a lot of stuff from the recent trip to Mt. Assiniboine that I am anxioius to see, and a backlog of a lot of older stuff as well.  I dug through my notes today and discovered that I still have over 40 sheets of film, exposed in 2014, that requires processing.  As I worked on a few batches of negatives this weekend I threw in a couple sheets from the recent trip down to East Coulee.  These were both taken on Fuji Neopan Acros 100, exposed at 80 iso and processed in Rodinal 1:50.  The first is an over view of Horse Thief Canyon taken on the afternoon of October 2nd, with a 400mm lens and a #25 Red Filter.  The second was taken a couple hours later and is a detail of some sand patterns in Horse Thief Canyon.  This one was taken with a 150mm lens and no filter.  In the coming days I will download a few snap shots from this trip and post them as well.  After that I will return to more of the images from Mt. Assiniboine.

More Assinboine Negatives

I've included scans of more of the negatives from the recent trip to Mt. Assiniboine.  These are all from the first batch of film that I processed after the trip.  Kodak T-Max 100, exposed at 80 iso, and developed in 510 Pyro, 1:100, for 7:45 minutes.  In my opinion these images are not as strong as the individual ones from the same batch, which I previously posted.  So, I won't ramble on ad nauseam about their making.  These are nice enough images, but I'm unlikely to invest the time and materials in making a fine print in the darkroom from any of them.
I have since processed a couple more batches of film from the trip so there will be more images posted on the blog in the coming days and weeks.

Eddy on Upper Gog Creek

I just returned from four days in the badlands of southern Alberta, hence the delay in updating my blog.  More information and images from that trip to follow in future blog posts.  For now, here is another image from the September trip to Mt. Assiniboine.  This image was taken on September 16th about 11:00 AM.  This is upper Gog Creek, near treeline, in Wonder Pass.  This particular spot is only a few hundred yards from the continental divide and the Alberta - British Columbia border.  My hand held GPS unit indicated that the elevation was 7660 feet above sea level.

I have always been captivated by the way a still photograph can convey time.  I have been photographing moving water for years.  I have always been on the lookout for swirling eddies, and made numerous attempts to photograph them.  This one was particularly successful, in my opinion.  A rapid just out of view to camera right was creating a lot of bubbles in the creek.  As the water spilled down into the upper reaches of the canyon, many of these bubbles were captured in this swirling eddy.  Rather than compose in tight on it, I chose to include the eddy as just a portion of the overall view.  I think it worked out reasonably well.  I put a dark red filter [#25] on my 110mm Schneider Super Symmar XL lens to both add contrast, and increase the exposure time.  This was coupled with a small aperture of F36.0 and yielded a shutter speed of about 4 seconds.  The image was taken on a ReadyLoad packet of Kodak T-Max 100 film, exposed at 80 iso.  This is one of my favorite images from the trip and I expect I will attempt a fine print in the darkroom this winter.  I have another version of this image shot on Fuji Acros 100 with a slightly longer exposure.  I will wait until I process that film, and compare the two, before deciding on which to print.