77497 Bighorn Sheep
From the film archives: three rams confer in the back country of Jasper National Park. I use the term "back country" loosely - meaning that I didn't shoot this from my car or beside a road. I had to hike to get there. But it wasn't very far, only an hour or so up the trail to Wilcox Pass, and then picking my way off-trail, pulled by the sound of bashing heads. A rarity: rutting behaviour in late September! That night it snowed. The advancing cold front must have made all the sheep a little antsy, but seven or eight of them tolerated my presence for an hour at close range.
Back in the days of film, we had to work with very slow emulsions, ie. low ISO numbers. I shot this on Fujichrome Provia 100, push processed one stop to ISO 200. Today I can use my D800 at ISO 2000 with better results than this, but those were the times and this was the outcome.
Photographed in Jasper National Park, Alberta. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 1998 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
77497 Bighorn Sheep
From the film archives: three rams confer in the back country of Jasper National Park. I use the term "back country" loosely - meaning that I didn't shoot this from my car or beside a road. I had to hike to get there. But it wasn't very far, only an hour or so up the trail to Wilcox Pass, and then picking my way off-trail, pulled by the sound of bashing heads. A rarity: rutting behaviour in late September! That night it snowed. The advancing cold front must have made all the sheep a little antsy, but seven or eight of them tolerated my presence for an hour at close range.
Back in the days of film, we had to work with very slow emulsions, ie. low ISO numbers. I shot this on Fujichrome Provia 100, push processed one stop to ISO 200. Today I can use my D800 at ISO 2000 with better results than this, but those were the times and this was the outcome.
Photographed in Jasper National Park, Alberta. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 1998 James R. Page - all rights reserved.