Deliberately Digital in Banff, AB

 

This is my first attempt to deliberately shoot digitally in the style I have been evolving with my landscape film photography. At the same time, I ran through two rolls of film, which I will post to the film blog when they are developed and scanned.

 

I was incredibly fortunate that work brought me to Banff for several days at the beginning of October 2024. I was speaking at an electricity industry conference, Grid Forward, held at the Banff Centre for Creativity and Arts. This was not my first visit to Banff, but my first stay at the Banff Centre, which is a beautiful campus a short hop from the town site.

 

I managed to snag a couple of hours there to take some photos in and around Banff, towards Lake Louise, and the nearby Vermillion Lakes. My colleague from the office, Faran, came along for a couple of these as navigator in the rental car and camera wrangler, as I swapped from film to digital, and switched lenses on both cameras. Here’s a Lake Louise selfie of us:

 

 

All these were taken with a Nikon D850 camera and traditional manual-focus lenses. The two prime lenses I used were the Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f1.4 and the Carl Zeiss Distagon 25mm f2.8. I acquired these lenses for use with my film cameras, but I am able to use them as well with the digital Nikon. While not as convenient as zoom lenses and not equipped with autofocus, their image rendering is absolutely spectacular.

 

The view from downtown Banff, from the bridge over the Bow River:

 

 

The iconic Banff Springs Hotel, photo from the other side of the Bow River, near the Banff Centre, taken an hour after sunrise:

 

 

The Banff Springs Hotel, at dusk:

 

 

On the road to Lake Louise, we came across an ultra large format (ULF) set-up.  I posted this image on a Facebook group for large-format photography and found out that this is a well-known ULF artist Bill Hao, whose story and art can be seen here.

 

 

Lake Louise, the weather was not great, but at least the rain held off.  Even on a cool day, this is a very popular spot:

 

Photos from around Vermillion Lakes:

 

And finally, there was a wedding photo shoot taking place at one of the lakes:

 

Bonus: some pictures shot on my iPhone:

Once I develop and scan the photos taken on the Hasselblad, I will put a link here.