Boreal Memories

A Tribute to Kodak Lumier S               9 February 2013

Perspective.  I am still a kid.  I’m 43.  I was 20 just a few days ago, and I still feel 20 when I’m in the woods with a camera in my hand.   I’m young.   I haven’t been around that long at all.  But…

Boreal Owl, Aegolius funereus

Back in the old days when there was film, a time only a few years ago, a time hundreds of years’ images ago, we had some serious limitations.  It cost lots of money, at least ten bucks to make each set of 36 exposures, and lots of things went wrong. In the wilderness, we often ran out of film. Unexpected things happened when the last roll was spent (film came in canisters we called “rolls”).  Print film had more exposure latitude, but slide film was very unforgiving.  There were all-time greats like Fuji Velvia 50 and Kodachrome 64, and there were those early E-6 cheapo slide films that disappointed each and every time.  Somewhere around 1998, yes, way back then, I can almost remember that a spectacular film with pretty high speed and pretty good grain came around, and it was called Kodak Ektachrome Lumier. If it was ISO 100, I always “pushed it” to ISO 200 for a couple of bucks extra in processing.  If I am accurate in my distant recollections, there was a saturated variety called Lumier S and Lumier SW (saturated well), and these films did things Fujichrome didn’t.   While Fuji Velvia bedazzled with its rainbow cool saturation, Lumier punched with warmth, red tones that came out best on cloudy days.  Lumier could turn a pea soup sky into a real photo studio, and I loved it for that.

Flash to the present.  Digital is all that is left.  Kodak, sadly, is saying farewell, no longer making film or cameras.  We’ll miss Kodak, the innovations, the legend, and even the red and yellow logo.  Those of us old enough to know Kodak are sad to see it go.   Kodachrome film, except in the museum vaults of photographers’ archives, has gone extinct.   The end of an era.

A winter trip to the North Shore, chasing owls, stopping at Stony Point near the Alseth road in search of birds and landscapes, brings the whole story full circle.  My first winter owling trip to the North Shore of Lake Superior was in the winter of 1991-1992.  I shot Kodachrome 64 and Agfachrome 100 on that first trip.  I had my first truly good glass, and I got my first ever professional results with a camera.  Great Gray Owl was my subject on that day in December of 1991.  I have been at it off and on for 21 years.  In that time, I have learned to understand light as much as the owls.  I have grown in my awareness of the birds, and I have seen the shift in the Sax Zim Bog from lonely wilderness to bird photography mecca.   Every trip seems to end up around Knife River, and every trip brings the wondrous aromas and rich, delightful flavors of Russ Kendall’s brown sugar cured and maple smoked lake trout and salmon. 

Today, I was in search of Boreal Owls, a small and rare owl that nests in aspen cavities and sometimes hunts from an exposed perch at the tip of a spruce.  I stopped in to Russ Kendall’s to buy fish. As I told the clerk that this marked my 21^st year as a customer, I had a rush of memories.  My eyes filled with the memories of film, hundreds of encounters with owls, and the few successes that were captured in the emulsion.   Today, the sky was threatening pea soup with a soft halo of white light slipping through the thin spots in the overcast layer.  It would be hit and miss.  I’d sure like to have my Lumier.  And that’s when it hit me. “Shoot it RAW, shoot it open, and add a little extra light.  You can make Lumier of it when you get home.”   

The Boreal Owl was a rare find, though I had help.  There is currently a Boreal Owl irruption along the North Shore.  While I arrived pre-dawn in search of the Boreal Owls that had been seen, I was only finding Northern Shrikes.  Scouring the branches of literally thousands of spruces and aspens, I turned up empty.  I exchanged phone numbers with other birders on the prowl, and, as I was taking a break to buy lake trout, my phone rang.  Owl found!   As we watched, it hunted, caught and ate a vole, preened, and hunted some more.  Despite the grim reality that irruptive movements by owls are a response to starvation, this bird was healthy and strong.  We quickly fell in love with the little owl.

 All images were made on my Gitzo tripod using a Canon 40D and a refurbished Canon 7D. Lenses were the Canon EF 28-135 IS and the Canon EF 300 f4, IS.   Landscapes were usually ISO 100, and Boreal Owl images were shot at ISO 200, 400, and even 2000.