Red Waters Parted By Granite

Vaughn, mules are cool. I have heard they can be stubborn, but I have also heard that llama spit. I have never seen my llamas spit.

I truly believe the colors in this image are very close to the actual color of the original scene. I am making this statement based on memory because I do not use slide film, but rather negative film. I also believe there may be three things that are influencing my view. They are elevation, clarity of light, and time of day. I tend to shoot at very high elevations in early morning or late evening where the air is thin, clean, and light is very strong. Under these conditions I believe that colors are significantly more vibrant and pure.

This is in contrast to most of us who live at lower elevations where the air can be filled will vapor and pollutants that can deaden and flatten color almost to a monochromatic hue. Of course, some of the color in our images is a result on how we see color and motivates our choice of film.

When I am exhausted (which is much of the time) the world looks very dark and gray to me. However, when I am rested, in the mountains, and doing what I love to do, then the world is full of color. My photographs are a record of me when I am at my best and the world is filled with clear brilliant light and vibrant color.

First I have to confess that this isn't the kind of photography I practice, but I respect it a lot... I wonder if it worth the effort to climb these far away places and at the end distort the colors of the real thing, IMHO... I have the bad feeling that this kind of photographs could deviate the attention of the public to digital... I recently attended to an exposition in Madrid of the work of a prestigious spanish photographer were he showed some impecable, (in all senses impecable, no distortions at all, not even in the colors) landscapes of Iceland and Cuba, taken digitaly and lightjet printed in C type paper in real large sizes, it looked more to the real thing, I mean, traditional analog photography than the one showed here, and discover at the event and in ARCO (the international trade fair of art dealers) that this is a trend in Spain and in other european countries...

Mules are not stubborn...just difficult to move if they don't want to. The trick is to get them to think that what they want to do is the same as what you want them to do!

I can not accept that the colors you present are the same colors I would see if I was standing next to you when you took the photo. However, I will gladly accept that they are the colors you experienced, remembered, and felt at the time.

As a lifetime backpacker, and an ex-wilderness ranger, I have been in the Sierras, in the North Cascades, in the California coastal ranges and in Southern Alps of New Zealand (to mention a few), and have experienced elevation in all sorts of time-of-day, weather and seasons. But it has been awhile...I do need to get up and away!

Vaughn

PS...I have never used that method of focusing (never thought to as my camera/s are not marked in a way to do so.) I enjoy my time under the darkcloth and working with the slower, but the just-as-precise, WYSIWYG method. But your method is that is what I show students with their 35mm cameras and prime lenses, since they have those DoF markings on the lens.

Vaughn

Joe, I do not know what more I can say. The colors in this print are not distorted. Has anyone out there in APUX land wittnessed orange waters at higher elevations like it is shown here? I need some back up here.

Vaughn, most of the time when I am coming back from shooting film, campers are just climbing out of their tents. In order to witness the red waters like it is shown here you have to get up before sunrise. Do you get up early like I do or are one of the campers who are just climbing out of their tents when I am done for the morning?? If it is the latter, then you will never witness such colors or events. Sometimes I rise as early as 3:30 am.

Are you like most photographers who want cloud cover, shoot intimate landscapes under cover, or put the sun to the back of the camera to avoid deep shadows because your photographic process does not have the dynamic range to handle extreme lighting conditions? If so, then you will never witness or experience the highly directional brilliant clear morning light and the vibrant colors that resonate from its illumination.

What type of film do you use? What type of dynamic lighting conditions do you seek out? Do you embrace even light? If your motivation is to avoid strong highly dynamic light then you will not witness such colors. The color shown here are there in the natural world under the right atmospheric conditions, and I am not talking perception here.

I would say that the light shown in this photograph would only happen about once every two weeks in a given drainage. It is not a common event and that is why it took me three years and four visits (each for about a week for a total of about a month) to get this shot.

Those colors really did happen, but they are a rare event!!!

Steve, the colors have to be 'distorted". Both lenses and the film record color as an approximation of the color that is actually there. Long exposures (as in 8 seconds) also changes the color relationships within the image, as the rate of reciprocity "failure" of the different dye layers are not the same. Changing the development times of the film probably also changes color relationships within the image.

The color paper has its own response to light that changes color relationships between the neg and the print. You are exposing at different lengths of time, causing reciprocity failures within the dye layers of the paper. Then the color of light the print is viewed with (tunsten, daylight, tubes or a mixture), or on the computer screen, affects how we perceive the colors of the print.

And on top of this, you are changing the color relationships between the areas of colors when you change the filtration with the different masks.

All one can do is to try to get the colors the way one wants them.

vaughn

Edited to answer your questions...

Do you get up early like I do or are one of the campers who are just climbing out of their tents when I am done for the morning??

---I have been up at all possible times. Talk to the next wilderness ranger you meet about this. Also the sun has risen in your image -- it ain't all that early.

Are you like most photographers who want cloud cover, shoot intimate landscapes under cover, or put the sun to the back of the camera to avoid deep shadows because your photographic process does not have the dynamic range to handle extreme lighting conditions?

---The dynamic range of my process can produce a straight line response to the negative in the print. Whatever dynamic range is on the neg, I can get in the print. Some of my favorite images were of scenes that have a range of 9 to 13 stops...and for these I develop from "normally" to slightly plus development. For scenes of only 5 to 9 stops I extend the development quite a bit.

Do you embrace even light?

--I look at that as my "job", so to speak.

The color shown here are there in the natural world under the right atmospheric conditions, and I am not talking perception here.

--No, it is all about perception.

Vaughn

WOW,
everyone has already said whatever had to be said. I'm not one for color but I look forward to your work. As you have mentioned you visualize the shot, revisit and see if you can get it. sometimes yes sometimes no. But your work shows things many of us see time to time but only see in B&W. I see colors in sunsets in Florida that are outstanding, (and have almost run off the road looking), but because I work in B&W I have not persued capturing these color in color film.
I'll just leave that to photographers like yourself that do a superb job.

Mike Andersen