Over the past week or two I have been processing several batches of color negative film. I do not shoot a lot of large format color so I generally accumulate exposed film for a few years, before I get around to mixing up the chemistry and processing a batch. I'm not quite finished yet, and so far have run about 40 sheets of 4x5, dating back to 2017. This shot was in one of those batches.
The Monochrome Guild was out in Jasper National Park for our annual Fall Photo Weekend in November of 2017. We stopped along the Maligne River, just a short distance below Maligne Lake. I was telling my friend Steve about how when I had been at this exact spot, in 2002, on a previous Fall Photo Weekend. My friend Jon was with me at that time, and he spooked a moose out of the bush. I explained that Jon had started down towards the river and startled a moose out of the trees. It walked out into the river and stopped, and I was able to quickly photograph it with my view camera. I explained to Steve that it was very unusual to get a wildlife image with a view camera, as the equipment is just so slow to set up. The only reason I was able to capture it was because I already had the camera set up and focused for a landscape shot I had just taken. Just as we were talking about this, two moose wandered out of the bush, and into the river. Once again, I already had my camera set up. So, I was able to get this shot, as well as a couple more. At the point that this image was taken, the second moose had stepped back into the trees.
I shot this with a 300mm lens. This lens is not particularly long for large format and is about equivalent to a 100mm lens in full frame digital or 135 film format. Certainly not a wildlife lens and more like a portrait lens.
This is an extremely unlikely occurrence. What are the odds of it happening twice, at the same spot, fifteen years apart...??!!!
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