McWay Falls is located in a pristine cove on California's Big Sur coastline. In fact, it's one of Big Sur's main attractions, where hundreds -- if not thousands, of tourists gather each day to watch the spring-fed falls cascade into the ocean below. Typically, I don't enjoy photographing along a rail, especially among crowds of people, but this was a scene I really wanted to witness and photograph. On this particular evening, the sky was clear with a slight haze in the distance, which ended up working out better than I had thought. I exposed two sheets about 45 minutes before sunset to test the exposure latitude of two types of film, and my second two sheets I exposed as the sun barely started to touch the horizon. My positive film ended up being thrown away, as sometime during the 15 second exposure, the camera must have shaken slightly. This is the negative film, exposed for the shadows with no graduated neutral density filter, which definitely shows how much dynamic range Kodak Ektar can capture
It's definitely a beautiful location, and I hope to return again when the flowers are in bloom and the sky blows up. We can all dream, right?
Technical specs:
- Camera: Ebony 4x5
- Lens: Nikkor 90mm f/4.5
- Exposure: 15 Seconds
- Aperture: f/32
- Film: Kodak Ektar 100