Welcome Sun

Welcome Sun, originally uploaded by jabeinji46.

To the West of Amethyst Lakes in the Tonquin valley. Jasper. This photo involved hiking 2 miles in the dark with a flashlight

This photo was the culmination of a backpacking trip into the Tonquin Valley, Alberta, Canada. I rose a little more than two hours before dawn and hiked up a muddy and rocky trail with a small flashlight in order to get to the ramparts before the sun. I got to this spot about 15 minutes before the sun hit the top of the peaks and I set up my Hasselblad and Nikon D200 and began to shoot. I couldn't shoot fast enough as every few seconds I was sure that it was more beautiful than it had been just a few seconds before. After about a half an hour the Ramparts were fully illuminated and I was done. That's when I realized that all of the sweat from my hike had frozen on my body! Brrrrr! The whole time that I was shooting I could hear a Caribou belling at the top of the lake. I started to hike up to see if I could get some shots of the Caribou, but I quickly came to the realization that nothing on the trail that I could see this day would even come close to what I had just seen. The sad part of this story is that between using damaged film, and a lousy lab, several rolls of film were ruined. I plan to take some of the images down to the National Geographic lab and work with an expert to try to improve some of the images I have.
(jabeinji46)