Photographing glaciers in black and white

[Two23]

I have more serious equipment for more serious outings. I have the gear for 60 below, overkill considering it rarely gets colder than -40F here. I have hiked on several glaciers--Athabasca and a couple in Iceland. Wore crampons with toe picks for that, in case I needed to climb out of a hole. For just hiking on icy trails, frozen lakes, around waterfalls, or other less dicey places the Kathoolas are great! They are very well made, plus compact to carry, and bite the ice well. Heading out to the mountains on the western side of my state tomorrow to photo a train. Supposed to snow maybe a foot. I'm bringing the spikes AND the snowshoes. My boots are Oboz 10 inch Bridger and take crampons or snowshoes well.


Kent in SD

[MartinP]

If one wanted to darken reflections off water, unusual but you never know, would anyone have experience of the effect of a polariser on ice? The specular reflections might be limited, or are they so differently polarised that some reflections will always remain? And that's leaving aside colour photography of course.

[Drew Wiley]

I apologize if I'm in a bad mood, Kent. Glad to hear you know the limits of your gear. My snowshoes have instep "crampons" of a variety suitable for fairly steep slopes. I haven't done any serious ice travel for awhile, though my ice axe is handy if I ever need it again. There are still a few serious glaciers left in our mountains here, but not enough left to routinely carry special gear anymore. But lately I've been reprinting some 4x5 negs from back in the day. Why I get grumpy is due to the ultralight fad of travel on popular trails these days. Sooner or later someone gets the Darwin Award. I did plenty of ultralight mountain travel well before that term was ever coined, and Indians did it for millennia before me. But the difference is, I knew enough to head downhill fast into timber at the approach of a storm, while these neophytes just keep going because they're on a schedule. My friend literally had to spend an entire night shivering, standing outside in the snow in his down coat and parka so two people without even jackets could use his tent and share the sleeping bag. Otherwise they would have been dead long before morning. I know the feeling. Sometimes in the Fall I'd carry two jackets and raincoats because there was often someone way back on the trail without any, traipsing along in sneakers, shorts, and a T-shirt while some huge snow cloud was moving in fast. Five years ago it was too late for two such day hikers. Died on an afternoon walk that started out sunny and ended up snowing.

[Two23]

I apologize if I'm in a bad mood, Kent. Glad to hear you know the limits of your gear. .

No problem Drew. I get a little cranky sometimes too. I grew up in the woods of Missouri and still spend a good amount of time outdoors. It's one reason I moved to South Dakota. (That and the wonderful weather. ) I often go out in the worst winter weather at night to photo trains. Few will go with me. Sometimes my wife does, but only because she's afraid something will happen to me. I'm doing that this weekend. It's supposed to snow all day Saturday and then the temp drops to about 10 on Sunday. My kind of weather! I do know my limits, and often is the time I look at a situation and think to myself, "Nope, not doing that again!"

Kent in SD

[Drew Wiley]

Martin - some mountain photographers routinely use polarizers. I never do. I prefer to tango with reflections rather than tangle with them. In other words, I relish the glare and sparkle just as it is. But I do have a couple of nice polarizers for the copystand and should probably revisit the subject outdoors some day just for fun. One problem with them is that they're especially prone to fogging up. I ran into a European photographer way back in the mtns this summer with easily 15K of top-end digital Nikon gear, but otherwise utterly wasting his time because his polarizing filters were fogged. For a bit more money you can get the Kasseman type with tight O-rings that are better sealed against humidity; mine were made by B&W.

[Vaughn]

The glaciers I visited were almost at sea level and equivilent latitude as Coos Bay, Oregon. Not at all polar. Just a lot of rain to work around...a couple days of photographing over 4 or 5 days.

[Willie]

http://michaelandpaula.com/mp/html/p...0-A-Sampler-26

You might check out some of the photographs of Ice from Paula Chamlee - from Iceland.
Using old Kodak Super XX film, pyro developer and contact printed on Kodak Azo or their own Lodima paper it can give you a good idea of what one type of B&W material does.

TMax 100 is supposed to act as if has a mild Yellow filter and will give you a bit darker blueish shadow areas which might help bring out depth in some of the ice you will encounter. It does need good accurate exposure and development for the finest results. You should be able to so it. Whatever you decide on why not photograph some blocks of ice and piles of bagged ice under sunlight and overcast conditions where you are, develop them and do some fine tuning before you go? Glaciers are just bigger - much bigger and the light/shadow challenges will be basically the same. You will have already seen many of them on a small scale and having some time to shoot, develop, re-shoot and fine tune a bit will go a long way towards more confidence as you visit the Real Thing. A bit of testing will help with the confidence.

Good luck. Hope you have a great trip.

[Pere Casals]

Attachment 184941 Didn't use a filter, I never do, but also planned to print digitally so I could easily add contrast where needed in photoshop.

Chester, it's not the same adding contrast with a filter than adjusting it in photoshop. With BW film a color filter selectively darkens depending on the color in each spot, editing the curve for a gray image is another thing.

A color filter even may decrease contrast, for example a subject that's yellow and green may decrease contrast with a green or cyan filter...

While sometimes adding contrast with Ps may have similar effect that using a filter on the lens this is not the general case by far.

[Pere Casals]

Color images of glaciers show that they actually contain a lot of blue. So for black-and-white I imagine I’d want at least a yellow filter to get decent contrast in the image. Can anyone share their experiences with this? Next year’s trip* will very likely be a once-in-a-lifetime thing so I’d like to improve my odds of getting some keeper images.

There aren’t glaciers anywhere near where I live so I’ve no chance to do my own testing.

*Svalbard Islands

A very good friend was there in 2015, he was making the land rescue for balloons, he also flied a couple of times. There are polar bears there, not a hazard with "usual" precautions, it was this expedition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZxyV-w-zvc

Let me make an strong recommendation, also take a good deal of velvia and provia with you, if not sheets at least MF or 35mm, beyond what you do in BW. Highest peak is 1700m so not much UV messing.

Depending on the season you won't see any blue ice, only white on the blue. When sunny the challenge will be dealing with the high dynamic range of the scenes. A Pol filter can be very useful there, for sky and reflections.

[Drew Wiley]

Velvia for glaciers, Pere? .... you gotta be kidding. In mist or falling snow it might be appropriate, but anything resembling open sun and you've got a major problem with its very limited capacity for contrast. And UV can be intense even at lower altitudes where the air is especially clear. Ever hear of rapid sunburn on a pristine beach? ... For a long time I gave up on TMax100 for such shots. It handles the contrast wonderfully, especially by taking advantage of how pyro stain holds the highlights. But the edge effect is pretty disappointing compared to TMY400, so the actual enlargements don't look as sharp. But I learned that Perceptol when used at a higher dilution (1:3 from stock) significantly enhances edge effect as well as has an unusual compensating quality. I'd used Perceptol 1:1 long ago, and it didn't differ much from D76. But at greater dilution it becomes a wholly different animal, and I have been using this with real success for quite a variety of mountain images on TMX, including very high contrast scenes with shiny surfaces and brilliant sparkling specular highlights. The grain is still very fine, but with distinctly better definition. But I still prefer PMK for TMY400 (it looks a tad gritty in dilute Perceptol). Either version of TMax can almost equal the range of good ole gritty Super-XX, but are otherwise actually far more versatile films.