Maligne Moose

On Sunday November 5th, the last day of the 2017 Fall Photo Weekend, we were stopped on the side of the road, beside the Maligne River, just downstream from Maligne Lake.  I had my view camera set up on the tripod and was telling my friend Steve a story about the only large format wildlife shot I had ever taken.  In hindsight that wasn't quite true because I have one other one... of some bison in Elk Island National Park.  But, that story is for another day.  I told Steve about how I had my camera set up in this very spot.  I had just finished taking a couple of photographs of the Maligne River back on that day fifteen years prior.  My camera was still set up on the tripod when my friend Jon announced that he had to take a leak.  He crashed his way into the bush beside the road.  As he did so, he startled a couple of moose, who walked out into the river and stopped beside the big boulder I had been photographing.  With my camera still set up I was able to capture a shot of the two moose.  I looked up this old negative in my archive and found it.  It is from 2002 and was taken with my old Sinar F1 camera and a Nikkor 210mm lens, on Ilford Delta 100 film, developed in HC-110.  Surprisingly it was taken on November 24th of that year... almost a full three weeks later in the season than this year.  

As I was telling Steve this story, I glanced up to take a look at the river.  To my surprise, two moose had wandered out into the scene.  I wasn't quite ready with my camera this time around, but the two moose were pretty patient and I managed to finish setting it up and was able to expose a couple of sheets of film.  That film is not yet processed, but when I get to it I will post a scan of the resulting negative.  I did manage to get a couple of digital snapshots, and those are included below...