|
Patience and Persistence
The need for patience in successfully photographing the
mountains
Byron Harmon waiting for the light near Mount
Geikie and Amethyst Lake, 1914
(WMCR-V263/NA-1862) |
|
"It is easy to prove that
in an entire year there are only a few minutes, or at the most, a
few hours in which the conditions are perfect for exposing a plate.
Let us say that only during three months is the ground free of snow.
Of these ninety days the large majority will be either stormy, or
overcast, or very windy, and the remainder some will be densely
smoky, or too brilliant, so that the problem quickly narrows down to
a possible ten perfect
days. |
In each of these there
will be only one or two hours in which the direction of sunlight is favourable for any given picture, and during these hours only
a short time in which the ever-drifting clouds are properly grouped, the
water surface unruffled, and the sunlight falling on the foreground, or
distance, or wherever you desire it to be."
Wilcox, Walter. The Canadian Rockies.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913
Harmon’s persistence
One of Harmon’s expeditions to Jasper in 1924 lasted
seventy days. His group, including the writer Lewis Freeman, explored the
Columbia Icefield and climbed the surrounding mountains, often taking the
most difficult path to provide exciting photographs. They had been
forced to wait eight days for suitable light conditions on Mount Columbia,
one of the last mountains Harmon felt he needed for his collection.
-
It wasn’t until the afternoon
of the eighth day, after time, food, and patience
-
were exhausted and the pack
train had been sent down the valley, that
-
Harmon, lingering behind,
caught his image. The light played on the summit
-
for less than forty minutes.
At the end of those minutes, Freeman recalled,
-
the black rectangles of paper
torn from Harmon’s film packs were piled up
-
behind his tripods like the
brass shells around a hard-pumped machine gun
-
at the end of a battle.
Robinson, Bart. “A biographical portrait of Byron
Harmon.” in Byron Harmon: Mountain Photographer
/ Carole Harmon & Bart Robinson. Banff, Alberta: Altitude Publishing,
1992, p.13
 Print this information
sheet. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view/print this file.
|
