Beauty Creek

I just posted this one to my Flickr account earlier tonight and thought I would also include it here on my blog.  This is yet another image from the Fall Photo Weekend out in Jasper with the gang from the Monochrome Guild.  That turned out to be an exceptionally successful trip and I have several negatives that I will eventually invest the time and materials into making exhibition prints.  On this day in late October, it was pretty miserable.  Heavily overcast, raining off and on, and turning to snow at higher elevations.  My friend Peter and I set out from Jasper in the morning, hoping we'd be able to get out and take some photographs.  It wasn't looking very promising as we headed south from town down the Icefields Parkway.  We decided to try exploring the somewhat contained landscape of Beauty Creek.  The sky would not be prominent in any of these images and we could focus our attention on the details of the flowing water and the ice that was beginning to form.  It turned out to be a good choice, given the conditions we were working in.  As we made our way down the highway we found that in some areas the snow was beginning to accumulate on the pavement and the driving conditions were deteriorating.  This was to be our first taste of winter driving this season.  Of course since then we have been faced with much more of the same sort of weather.  In fact today here in Edmonton conditions deteriorated from about -9C and partly sunny this afternoon to -28C tonight with brisk 50km/h winds out of the northwest this evening.  Taking into account the wind chill factor it feels like -40C out there.  The snow is blowing and drifting and we are really into winter now.  I've been idling my truck a lot to warm it up before I head out anywhere, plugging it in whenever I park, and driving around with the four wheel drive engaged.  Needless to say the fuel economy has been terrible the past little while.   But, I digress... this post is about photography in the mountains before Halloween.  This shot was taken with my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Nikkor 150mm lens.  The film was Kodak T-Max 400, exposed at 640 iso and processed in X-Tol developer.  This is one of the film and developer combinations that I have been experimenting with.  The film is given slightly less exposure than recommended by the manufacturer, and then developed slightly longer than normal.  So far I am generally pleased with the result and will continue to refine my development time.  It is important to make sure that exposure provides adequate detail in the shadow areas and the development gives adequate contrast without blocking up the highlights.  So far so good....