Alpine Notes
35mm photographs from a short hike above Chamonix...
I found myself in a meeting during a short trip to Chamonix last November, watching beautiful Autumn light drift across the mountains out the corner of my eye, knowing the planned late-afternoon hike was going to miss the best of it. Some things you can’t just walk out of and grab your camera…it wasn’t a photo trip.
By the time we made it out and began the walk, I knew I’d missed it. It would be dark by the time we were above the valley. 200iso film, hand-held, not a set up for a crisp dark sky in the mountains. I took a single photograph through a break in the trees of the very last bit of light on the peaks, fairly sure it wouldn’t come out.
To my surprise the negative had a good amount of detail, and feeling to it. One of the reasons I like using film these days is for these surprises. Below is a crop of the frame. I’ll also post the full image. I like the wider peek through the trees, and perhaps the crop is because I know phones/digital reproduction will make it a little lost. But I’d choose to print it full, probably.
Soon after this, the moon came up over the back of the mountains, and it was beautiful.
I’ve only got round to getting the roll developed in the last couple of weeks, and sharing here some memories from a glorious hike above Chamonix the next afternoon. The first snow had just fallen. Our host (and Chamonix resident) Tue was definitely being relied upon for path-finding. I stupidly ran out of film, before it got really interesting, but maybe that’s part of the magic/regret of film. It’s just a memory, not another infinite number of digital pixels on a chip.
