Monochrome Guild Fall Photo Weekend 2023

For Twenty-Four years now the Monochrome Guild has been heading out for a fall weekend of photography.  The tradition started back in 2000 when my friend Jon and I headed out together for the first one.  I invited Jon to join us on the trip this year, but sadly he was unable to attend.  Jon no longer shoots film and is not an active member of the Monochrome Guild.  But he is friends with many of the current members, and is always welcome as a guest.

Most of the time we have four to six members of the group out for a weekend.  We like the fall because the accommodations are less expensive, and it is less crowded wherever we end up going.  Most of the time we visit Jasper National Park, and that was our destination again this year.

We have kept the fall tradition alive all these years, with only a short interruption for Covid.  In 2020 we had to cancel our weekend all together as the pandemic was in full swing.  In 2021 things were starting to open up, but sharing accommodations was not really an option.  That year we managed a couple of day trips, just to keep the tradition alive.  In 2022 we returned to the usual weekend long outing, and this year we did it again.

This year there were five of us... Steve Wreakes, Nigel Goldup, Court Smith, Gordon Dinwoodie, and myself.  Steve and I drove out together on the morning of Friday November 10th.  The others followed an hour or two later in a separate vehicle.  It was really heavily overcast most of the way out and Steve and I just didn't feel very motivated to try and photograph anything.  We arrived in Jasper in the early afternoon... too early to check into our hotel.  So we took an afternoon drive up the old Icefields Parkway.  It was closed for the season at the Whirlpool River so we were only able to get there, and then had to backtrack.  We stopped at one of our usual haunts, Portal Creek, to check out the ice conditions.  It had been cold and snowy a week or two prior and as a result the ice was not very photogenic.  We wandered around for a bit before eventually heading back into town, meeting up with the others, and checking into our hotel.  Later that evening we walked downtown and had dinner together at the Something Else restaurant.  Later still we hung around together in one of the two rooms we had rented and visited over a few beers and some fine scotch.