I made this view of the Illecillewaet Glacier after a challenging day hike up the Perley Rock trail in Canada's Glacier National Park in September of 1990, I never did make it up to the top of Perley Rock, but I was happy and rewarded with this scene near the end of the trail, which I made using a 4 x 5 view camera and a 300mm lens, it would be equivalent to a about 60 or 70mm lens on a digital SLR camera depending on the crop factor. I don't recall any of the shutter speed or f-stop data, but I recall how cold it was and the beautiful clouds which broke up as I got up to the base of Perley Rock. In the darkroom I would have printed this holding the mid section of the glacier back , burning down the sky and burning in the large rock on the bottom left to give it a nice black but not too dark appearance. In Photoshop, I kept much the same vision, burning down the sky and rock on the lower left, lightening up and adding contrast to the glacier. Compositionally I liked using the rock on the lower left as an anchor, the dark ridge, actually called Glacier Crest ( accessed by another trail ) between the glacier and sky I thought had a nice curvature and the sky really helped pull things together with the dramatic shapes and contrast.
Monday, March 12, 2007
The Trek to Perley Rock
I made this view of the Illecillewaet Glacier after a challenging day hike up the Perley Rock trail in Canada's Glacier National Park in September of 1990, I never did make it up to the top of Perley Rock, but I was happy and rewarded with this scene near the end of the trail, which I made using a 4 x 5 view camera and a 300mm lens, it would be equivalent to a about 60 or 70mm lens on a digital SLR camera depending on the crop factor. I don't recall any of the shutter speed or f-stop data, but I recall how cold it was and the beautiful clouds which broke up as I got up to the base of Perley Rock. In the darkroom I would have printed this holding the mid section of the glacier back , burning down the sky and burning in the large rock on the bottom left to give it a nice black but not too dark appearance. In Photoshop, I kept much the same vision, burning down the sky and rock on the lower left, lightening up and adding contrast to the glacier. Compositionally I liked using the rock on the lower left as an anchor, the dark ridge, actually called Glacier Crest ( accessed by another trail ) between the glacier and sky I thought had a nice curvature and the sky really helped pull things together with the dramatic shapes and contrast.
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2 comments:
I like this one! So Ansel Adams, dramatic, dark. I notice all your images are 'dark'; is this deliberate, or just a phase you're going through...!?
Janina
Thanks for the comments. I wouldn't say that I'm a deliberately looking for dark images, its just the way that the visual elements fall into place in regards to the tonal range from black to white, I have been on this black and white phase for a good twenty years now !
Gary
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