Three mistakes and one keeper.

A wonderful day of learning large format photography.

I could have titled this piece How many mistakes can one make in one afternoon? My learning opportunities started with me loading film into a brand-new holder in the dark and failing. The film kept jamming. I should have stopped and removed the holder from the dark tent and fixed the jam. Instead, I pushed harder and hoped. There will be more on the consequences later.

I typed the name of the area I wanted to visit on Google Maps, but I didn’t check to see where it was directing me. It wasn’t where I had planned to go.

The area I arrived at was very swampy. It was Rapid Lakes Unit, named after the lake near Carver Rapids on the Minnesota River. Spring-melted snow flooded the path and the land around the unit. My wellies and I headed down the path. After half a mile, I was missing a boot. The swamp monster mud had eaten it. I hopped back and retrieved it. I took the opportunity to photograph the trees reflected in the pond, also known as the path. It wasn’t a good photograph.

I carried on along the path, deeper into the swamp. I startled a Trumpeter Swan, which in turn startled me. These are giant birds with a six-foot wingspan and the volume of a canon going off. I stopped to make a photograph. Unbeknownst to me, the film that I had jammed into the holder was blocking the dark slide from closing. So half the negative was wildly overexposed, and the other half was not very good. One of the nice things about film photography is you don’t know you are making crappy photographs at the time. So filled with optimism and a sense of joy from the gorgeous weather, I continued deeper (with two boots)

I ran out of the path at a lovely area with a small area of open water dotted with the relics of dead trees killed by the frequent floods. I made two exposures. One was marred by me mistakenly putting my filter holder on poorly, allowing light to leak in on one side. The resulting negative looked like it had a massive lens flare across it. Thankfully, I framed a second composition, and it turned out to be the keeper of the day.

Carver Creek Trail, Rapids Lake Unit, MN.

This was a great photography trip. The weather was refreshing and sunny, the environment springing into life, the experience wonderful, and one photograph was all I needed to have a great time.