High Shoals Falls

[Jon Buffington]

I have been away from this site for too long! Thank you to Ben Egbert for reaching out From about a month ago, the below image is from North Georgia near Brasstown Bald. My wife and I took a day trip and hiked down to this falls. A beautiful cascade, I chose to shoot ilford fp4+ for several reasons. First, I have been shooting a bunch of B&W film this winter, preferring traditional film vs. digital for B&W (I prefer film's tonal response vs. digital...not better, different. I can get into this at a later time). Second, I wanted a slower speed film to minimize grain but also one that was not too contrasty. I love delta and tmax but both can build contrast and have a more straight line curve whereas fp4+ handles contrasty light better IME. I knew the sun may be out for a bit and I would need to control highlights. Third, fp4+ is just a beautiful emulsion. Camera was my old trusty canon A1 and the lens was a vivitar 28/2.5 (a very fine lens, cheap but sharp and underknown) with a yellow filter. I developed the roll in d76 1:1 and scanned at home with a Kodak Pakon f135+ with slight editing in LR6.

High Shoals Falls

 

[AlanLichty]

Very nice result Jon. I like the shutter speed for these falls and how the film covers the light range.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Good to see you back Jon, and what a gorgeous image to do it with. This is old time photography with a bit of new stuff to finish it.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Jon, I agree it's great to have you back! I am glad that Ben reached out to you.

This is a very nice shot, and it's interesting to read your choices about why you chose the film you did, thanks for including that info.

 

[Jon Buffington]

Very nice result Jon. I like the shutter speed for these falls and how the film covers the light range.

Thank you very much

Good to see you back Jon, and what a gorgeous image to do it with. This is old time photography with a bit of new stuff to finish it.

Glad to be back! Sometimes life gets busy and I forget the things I want to be involved with.

Hey Jon, I agree it's great to have you back! I am glad that Ben reached out to you.

This is a very nice shot, and it's interesting to read your choices about why you chose the film you did, thanks for including that info.

Thank you Jim.
I very much shoot both digital and film. Aspects I like about both mediums. I have to think more with film, ie, emulsion, color or B&W, film stock, what developer, what filter, etc. and that is sometimes very appealing to me. Other times I have pre-visualized the outcome or what I want out of a scene and digital very much allows me that flexibility in post.

 

[Mike Mancil]

An excellent waterfall shot and a beautiful scene. The summary makes the shot even more interesting.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Nice work and thanks for the detailed explanation. I always aspired to fine art B&W when I was shooting film, but never mastered it to my satisfaction, so ended up just shooting slide film. Now I can't imagine going back to film for any reason, but find it very interesting when others do, esp. when they get nice results like this.