Lesson Learned…

Oauchita Mountains. Little Missouri Falls. Shot on Digital

Ever since discovering the beauty of the Oauchita Mountains, and the fact that they are in “our backyard”, I have been taking at least 1 trip up there every year. I normally try and go in the spring for my birthday and then again in the fall for the colors. Most years, I feel like I miss peak autumn colors by at least a week. This year I didn’t make it up there in the spring so I was itching to get back.

It had been A YEAR, if you know what I mean. Nothing major, just a lot of little things that added up to a lot of stress. This year I didn’t really do much other than work. Yes, there was some progression and small day adventures and the such but nothing great that made it stand out other than starting to shoot film. It was really just a year of survival. Just trying to make it through the year with as minor of battle wounds as possible.

Anyways, we decided to take this fall trip the second weekend of November. Luckily, it had been raining prior to this trip so the streams and creeks would be flowing well. Unfortunately for this trip, it would rain... for half of it. Now, before this year the rain would of been fine. Weather sealed camera gear is great. But, this year none of the equipment I was planning on using had any kind of sealing whatsoever. I did take most of the digital equipment just in case, but, at this point, I hated using it. It just wasn’t producing the results I had been after. I, also, had taken the big tent. The untested in increment weather tent. The very LEAKY tent.

From the moment we loaded up and began our journey up there, I just had a feeling that we shouldn’t go. I thought the whole drive up there, “why are you going at this point?”. I wasn’t in the state of mind to go. I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy myself, but, I proceeded with the plan. It rained off and on the whole drive. Dark most of the drive because it’s winter time. We got to a camp site around 10-11, I believe. Set up in the rain and tried to get some sleep. This is when we realized, this tent seeps water through ALL of the material. It dripped on me the entire night. By morning, half the floor is now a miniature lake. Thankfully though, none of the clothes or anything was wet. Just blankets and the floor. So, we get as much water out of it as possible and get ready to head out for the day.

While it’s still raining, I believed the weather prediction that it was going to quit halfway through the day. With that in mind, I start scouting locations. What will make for some good photographs when it finally clears up? I go to a spot that I knew was kinda cool and would be interesting even in the rain. Pulled out the digital camera because I cant shoot either of the film cameras in this weather. The more frames I fired off, the more frustrated I became. Nothing was coming out the way I wanted. Most of it was my fault because I wasn’t putting enough effort to compose correctly for my vision of the final image. After switching to medium format, my vision became a little more clear and shooting with the digital camera now required more work. Work that I was not in the mood for.

After walking around for a bit, I told myself to suck it up and put in the effort. And what do you know, it somewhat paid off. I left that spot with like 2 shots I didn’t hate. We made it over the hump and were moving on. So we drove on in search of a spot that I have been trying to find again since the very first trip I made there. I was pretty sure I knew were it was now. I mean, where else could it be? I had already scoured that entire place in previous trips, minus this one spot. Low and behold, THERE IT IS!. Finally found it again. It’s a pretty popular/well known waterfall we would later find out from a person on a hiking trail. #faceplam

Now, it’s still raining but i found the holy grail of waterfalls to come back to when its over, hopefully in the morning. This trip is starting to make a little progress, but I still can’t seem to shake this funk I had been in since before we left to come. Something just wasn’t right. We ate breakfast just up from the falls before continuing on. I am probably 100 frames in, it’s digital so I can shoot however much my 258 GB cards will let me. Still not feeling it too well but I am trying. This was just supposed to be THE trip and it wasn’t living up to the hype I had made it out to be,

After what had felt like an eternity of a day, we head to the laundromat in town to dry everything out. The closer we get to town the less it’s raing. By the time we get to there and start drying everything, THERE’S THE SUN! Now my hopes get lifted like just a smidge. Still not feeling anything but we’re making progress. We grabbed dinner while in town and head over to get some dry firewood since it stopped raining finally. On the departure from the ol’ Tractor Supply, we found a food truck just opening up for the evening with fried oreos. Now you know I have to stop and get some!

With all of this goodness going on, you’d think the trip was on the up. However, by the time we hit the forest again, Its a light drizzle. *insert eye roll here* I made the bed again and started my fire. I was 100% going to sit in the rain next to my fire and sulk in my misery. And so I did till 1 of the 2 bundles we picked up had burnt.

Finally, it’s Sunday morning. It had quit raining and there was a light fog. I made coffee, threw everything in the car, and it was off to the races to capture everything we possibly could. We stopped a couple of times on the way to the falls and every time was for over an hour. After the previous day feeling like an eternity, these hourish long stops felt like 10 minutes. I was capturing what I thought were going be great photographs. It was nice to be in my zone and out of my head. After leaving the falls and it becoming midday, we had a little time to catch our breaths and find the next spots. After deciding on another waterfall, we put it into the maps and head out. Getting all but 1.5 miles from it, the small country road has a washed out bridge theres no way to get past in this little car. Here’s the luck of the trip coming back around. Try another way around, MUD. Like not a small amount of mud but the entire road is just mud for miles. Enough mud that after about a quarter of the way, I turned around because I had already pushed my luck enough in that car last year on Ophir Pass in Colorado, that’s a story for another day.

Finally we found a couple small falls to hike to just before sunset. Spending a little over an hour there and capturing photos I felt were better than I had expected. We start the drive home and I stopped for one last photo op of the trip and finish the 2 rolls of film in the RB.

After a couple of weeks of healing from the emotional damage of this trip, I developed the film… The black and white film i shot had ALL been underexposed because I clearly didn’t know how to properly expose at that time. I had tried to go all analog on this trip and didn’t comprehend that your shadows are supposed to be on zone 3 not 2. Now it’s time to move on to the color rolls. I knew I had to overexpose color film so I had higher hopes for these knowing that they were also “underexposed”. With me trying to overexpose, it just ended up at a “normal” exposure for that particular film. I tried to cut my time in half and decided to load both rolls onto the same reel so they could be developed together. I had never tried this before but knew it was possible. This was not the film to try this with seeing as its the most expensive film I shoot. But I did it anyways. This is also the farthest I had pushed a set of chemicals before. Both of these ended up resulting in the demise of these rolls. Between the under development and creases in the film from trying to JAM it on the reel, only one frame made the cut.

While it was a less than pleasurable experience from the beginning, I did learn a lot from the trip. I learned the proper place to expose shadows for. That if i plan on pushing chemicals that far to really compensate for it. That I can still use digital to capture okayish photos if need be. And the biggest one, that tent can go in the TRASH!

This article is just another way that trip keeps on giving seeing as it was lost after i wrote the entire thing Friday moring before the 9 to 5. But I will let it be another lesson learned, make sure you save it before trying to move on. Lastly were going to learn how to include pictures in the article. So, if you saw photos throughout the article you know it worked. If not, they will be down below.

As always, thanks for reading! Down below are some of the shots that were ok on digital and messed up film frames.

-Brock