Sunday, November 25, 2012

Great Falls of the West Fork

The Great Falls of the West Fork of the Trinity River are a little visited spot in Fort Worth.  Hidden under steep bluff in an old park one can find this fantastic 10 foot river spanning waterfall.

It has been one of my favorite places to photograph over the last year.  This was a late winter day when the clouds were thick and I was not even sure if there would be a sunrise.  It seemed like a good day to take out the 4x5 and shoot some film.  

I arrived onsite early in the morning and started picking out a spot for the camera.  I framed up an image with the 210mm lens for a slightly longer than normal view.  Put on my 2 stop grad ND filter to allow for the sky.  Took a meter reading.  It would be a long shot, factor in reciprocity and it was roughly a minute in the dim light.

Decided to go with color and grabbed some Velvia 100F.

Made the image.

Then did a longer exposure with Efke 25 B+W film.

Several weeks went by until the the film was processed.  After looking at them both, I decided the color version, as muted as it was, made the better image.