Sometimes, some of the best subjects could be found right along the road. As Edward Weston, the most influential and defining photographer of the past century once famously said – “Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.”.
I often find it is true. We, landscape photographers, find ourselves venturing far into the wilderness, enduring long and exhausting hikes in search of that perfect image, ignoring and blinding ourselves from what is right there in front of our eyes in a more mundane setting so to speak.
Almost as a tribute to Edward Weston’s words, this image was taken precisely 500 yards from where I parked my car just along the mountain road.
Scanned sheet of large format 8x10 Fuji Provia 100F film.
As my month-long photography trip back in October 2020 (read more about it here) was coming to an end I was driving across the mountain pass not too far from Mt St Helen in Washington state back home anticipating a good cup of coffee and a hot bath. The fresh dusting of snow like a blanket covered evergreen trees and the road overnight. It was quite beautiful scenery by itself. It was early morning, way before the sun had a chance to rise up high enough to start melting the snow.
After a few switchbacks as the road was winding down the mountain, I drove by the small grove of trees that turned their color and were covered in snow as the rest of the scenery. I realized the potential for the photograph, quickly found the nearest dirt section on the side of the road that resembled a pullout where I could tuck away my car, and I quickly started unpacking my gear.
It took me about an hour or so to set up the final composition and expose three sheets of Fuji Provia 100 film with slightly different exposures as the light was changing fast. The resulting image you see here is the third sheet which came out perfectly exposed and balanced in terms of the composition. The first two sheets came out slightly darker lacking details in the shadows.
My large format 8x10 Arca Swiss view camera.
View from the back of my camera from under the dark cloth – it is upside down and mirrored.
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