Stream Through Forest, 1982. North Cascades National Park, Washington

This is a conceptual photograph resulting from my desire to produce a somewhat "dreamlike" image of a soft, cottony stream meandering through a dense pattern of trees. I found this subject within a year or two after conceiving the image in my mind. Since the light level in this dense forest was quite low, it was necessary to use an exposure of several minutes. I originally shot this image back in the late 1970's. Unfortunately, wind was blowing through the forest during the exposure causing the trees to sway and appear a bit "unsharp". In addition, I did not account for quite enough reciprocity failure and the negative was a bit underexposed. I was able to re-shoot this image in 1982, learning from my mistakes on the previous attempt. This negative is far superior to the first. I used a 121mm Schneider Super-Angulon lens. I utilized 4x5 Tri-X film developed Normal -1 in dilute HC-110 developer. For the print, I use a soft developer such as Ansco 120, coupled with a grade 3 paper and careful masking techniques. Around 1994 I abandoned the use of  highly diluted developers for contraction development of the negative. I now use SLIMT development (selective latent image manipulation technique) which employs a pre-bath of highly dilute potassium ferricyanide prior to transferring the negative to the normal strength developer (such as HC-110).