Looking Down

This image was taken during the annual Fall Photo Weekend, an outing with some of the members of The Monochrome Guild, back in October of 2016.  We headed out to Jasper National Park for a weekend of photography, as has been our annual tradition for over 15 years.  I saw this view of the Astoria River and decided to pass on it, in favor of hiking down into the valley below.  I spent a couple hours shooting down there before scrambling back up to the top.  While I was waiting for some of the others to make their way back up, my friend Peter pointed this view out to me again.  I think the reason that I had passed on it before, is that it is seen from a rather precarious position, at least for a large format camera.  This is the Astoria River as seen from the bridge on Highway 93A.  The bridge is a steel arch bridge and is quite a distance up above the rushing water below.  In fact I had to use a lens of rather long focal length to get in this tight on the rocks and water below.  My tripod was right up against the guard rail of the bridge, with the camera hanging over the edge.  I had visions of dropping a filter, or worse yet the entire camera, over the edge and onto the rocks below.  But I survived, and so did all of my equipment, without incident.  The scale of this scene may not be fully appreciated but that large central rock is at least the size of a small car, and what looks like a stick laying on the rocks at the edge is actually the trunk of a lodgepole pine.  I'm glad that Peter convinced me to set up and shoot this as I think it is quite an exceptional image.  This one was taken on 4" x 5" Kodak T-Max 100 film, processed in 510 Pyro developer.