Four Trunks

I shot this image back in June, when my friend Rob and I were exploring up in Jasper National Park.  This is Tangle Falls, not far from the Columbia Icefields.  Rob and I were talking when we were here, that there must be hundreds if not thousands of images of this waterfall taken every day, for at least the busy tourist months of each season.  But 90% of those are taken from down by the viewpoint on the road.  Rob and I hiked, a very short distance... maybe 50 yards or so, up to the multiple cascades of this waterfall.  It is a bit of a scramble in places, but nothing crazy. 

I took this one on Efke PL25M 4" x 5" sheet film.  This film was discontinued some years ago, but I still have several boxes in my freezer.  It is expired by now for sure, but I don't know exactly when.  The early batches of this stuff did not include an expiry date.  But in comparing the emulsion batch number to some later ones, I'm guessing this stuff hit its best before date about 12 to 15 years ago.

I used a 300mm lens, about equivalent to a 100mm lens on a full frame digital camera, or 35mm film camera.  This created some compression between the foreground trunks and the forest behind the waterfall.

This was one of the rare occasions that I used a #47 Blue filter.  This filter transmits mostly blue light, and filters out red.  The result is that it really opens up the shadows.  The shadows were only illuminated by blue light reflected off the sky.  I think it worked in this case as there is detail remaining in the foreground trunks, and full detail in the background forest.

This is a very slow film that I expose at 10 iso.  With a three stop filter factor for the #47 blue, and a small aperture of F25 to hold depth of field, this required an 8 second exposure, even though it was taken a few minutes before high noon, and everything was in full sun.  I'm quite pleased with the result and might include this one in my annual calendar, and look forward to printing it in the darkroom.