Calgary and the Bow in long exposure

Last week Sean and I went for a ramble along the Bow River. I was looking for long exposure reflections, so only took the GW690 along with a 10 stop ND filter, plus the usual yellow filter for Delta 100. 

I've found that if I carry both a digital and film camera, I tend to use the digital. So much of my digital photography is events where I click first and think after, so as to catch fleeting moments. Plus carrying more than one camera now is getting old and heavy. Call me a weenie if you must.

Film photography, especially medium and large format is thinking first, and getting everything right before clicking the shutter. This ramble was one of the most successful for me on that front. I remembered all the gear, and didn't make any boneheaded mistakes with or without the filter. I exposed 2 rolls, and of the 16 frames, all were in focus, were all of something, and were reasonably well exposed considering the long exposure and reciprocity failure. 

I was looking for water smooth enough to show reflections, which some of the calmer areas are already, and hopefully some cloud motion on a mostly cold and overcast day. Most exposures were f11 or f16, and around 18 to 20 seconds, with a few as long as 30 seconds or as short as 8 seconds.

And for the digital pixel peepers who might be joining us, yes, this lens has lots of detail to look at, though I'm not sure how much will show up in these jpg images. However there are (gasp!) lots of fine dust spots or tiny hairs. I removed the most noticeable ones but there's still lots more. These are all otherwise lightly edited. 

1. We started near the skipping stone bridge just in view on the right.

2. I think of this as Fort Calgary, but it's called the Confluence now. 

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4. Part of the skipping stone bridge. I was hoping there would be a bit more interest in the clouds.

5. We were fortunate not to twist an ankle walking on a gravel bar covered in several inches of snow to hide the big round rocks. Neither of us were wearing waterproof boots so we were reluctant to venture out onto an actual ice shelf. I was quite taken with the zig zag of the bridges. I was hoping for a bit more reflection in the water, but it was doing interesting things in the foreground.

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8. I'll admit it. This is the composition that really caught my eye, and I paid attention to the exposure times. I'll almost certainly print this one when I do more darkroom work.

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10. Across the bridge and now looking south east. I was interested in the curving shadow, wanting to get some detail in the bottom of the bridge above me, and not blow out the remainder of the scene.

11. Two similar images, trying to catch the train in motion. These were 8 second exposures, since the sun had come out and it was quite a bit warmer.

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13. So up to there I was 12 for 12. It was getting colder again, and we were losing the light. We drove over to Prince's Island. I tried two frames of the sun and clouds doing (what I thought were) interesting things above and behind some downtown buildings. Alas, the interest didn't show up.

Sean was working the scene while I was distracted by a photoshoot taking place nearby on the ice. I like watching other photographers at work. I saw this composition with Sean framed by the circular thingie, and he waited patiently as I got the filter off. I knew this was a risky photo as this camera flares badly when pointed into the sun. I played with some editing tricks in NLP and then Lightroom, but in the end realized that it wouldn't look right for Sean to be anything but a shadow given where the sun is.

The last image was the bridge over the ice rink. It's just a boring photo, not worth the effort to edit.

As I said, I'm really pleased how the day turned out. I took my time looking for compositions I found interesting, and said no to a bunch of images that weren't quite it, or involved me standing in the river. There were several compositions I was unable to capture with the camera at hand, and I knew perfectly well would have been nice given a different lens. I tried to be methodical as I took the light readings and calculated reciprocity. I miss Acros II. 

A couple days later I developed both rolls. I use a Black, White, and Green developer. (details here.) It's a liquid the consistency of cough syrup, with a long shelf, and it can be poured down the drain afterward. The develop time is 13 minutes for Delta 100, and I suspect I used a much shorter time with some earlier rolls. I'm not sure if they look a bit thin because I erred on exposure time, or on development time. 

Not sure when I'll get the dark room going again, but I hope soon. Stay tuned.