Ryan Jordan

Absaroka Sunset (Leica M6 & Fuji Velvia 50)

Absaroka Sunset

Leica M6, Fuji Velvia 50

I love Velvia 50 because it can simultaneously do pinks, blues, and whites without much color casting and contamination. Digital can’t do that, and it’s nearly impossible to easily correct in Photoshop, which means that it’s tedious and thus, a waste of precious time. Time should be spent on doing important things, not tedious things.

I miss film photography for its ability to deliver out of camera images that don’t require fussing, and I find it pretty ironic that most professional digital photoprocessing software like Color Efex Pro uses nonlinear (and probably, logarithmic) image manipulation functions combined with dodge and burn features to help digital look, well, more like film.

This isn’t a digital vs. film argument. That’s a dead horse I really don’t care to visit or spend time on. I just think it’s really neat that the image above was scanned and dropped straight into my blog without a robust appointment with Photoshop.

So let’s talk about the image instead, and not photography.

This view looks straight into the western edge of the Absaroka Range. One divide behind the horizon is the Absaroka Backbone (hydrologic divide), which snakes towards Wyoming for a distance of 300 miles. It’s my favorite long distance trek in the lower 48. I wrote about the trek, and the Backbone, in Issue 6 which now lives on in PDF format.

It’s a Tough Walk because if you’re going to stick to the benches below the Backbone, and you should, because the trails take you too far away from it, you have to contend with Stuff and deal with Issues.

That Stuff and those Issues were what was on my mind this January evening as I snapped this shot, because I wasn’t really dealing with any Stuff or Issues, having just completed a nice soak at Chico.

Don’t get me wrong, I like hot springs as much as the next guy.

But some days, like today, I miss the toughness of being in a Wild Place.