Category: Travel

Travel photography

Bloody Sunrise at Yosemite Valley

Thanks to the accurate prediction of Sunrise-Sunset Forecasts Photographic Service by ccnbbc@WeChat, we captured this dramatic scene in Yosemite valley in the morning of November 6, 2021.

As a pre-caution to avoid Covid-19 exposure, we did not go to the now-always-crowded Tunnel View. Moreover, we always feel that Tunnel View does not provide a balanced composition for El Capitan and Half Dome since these two iconic landscape features are separated too far away from each other. In this view, these two giant rocks are much closer. One drawback of this composition is that Bridalveil Fall is blocked by the mountain on the right side of the composition. However, since it was the dry season, Bridalveil Fall was short of water anyway.

National Park Service was conducting controlled fire to reduce the amount of dry plants on the valley floor, a major source of fuel to wild fires across California during the past years. The fire created a thin layer of slightly blueish smoke near the entrance of the valley, adding to the atmosphere that photographers can only dream to have.

China Travel Photos by Xpan and Fujifilm Provia 100f Slide Film

Almost a decade ago, we travelled to China to visit our relatives. On that trip, we carried a Hasselblad Xpan camera and several rolls of color slide films. After coming back to the States, we stored the exposed films into the freezer, waiting for an appropriate moment to develop them. The waiting turned out to be near ten years long. Finally, thanks to www.needfilmdeveloped.com, we got these rolls of color slide films developed at an affordable cost. It brought back joys to us with the precious memory of that trip! And the color rendition of Fujifilm Provia 100F film is simply stunning.

The Make of the Picture Merced River Reflection

We carried our new toy, the Intrepid 4×5 large format camera to Yosemite in the past weekend. With this modern day remake of the old technology, every step of photography leaped back like good old school days.

There’s no WYSIWYG viewfinder but a half-transparent ground glass on the back of the camera — we had to wrap it with a silly black cloth in order to see the scene.

There’s no auto-focus but a nob at the bottom of the camera and a magnifying glass — we turned the nob and peeked through the magnifier on the ground glass to make our best guess of the focus.

There’s no metering system on the camera — we had to hand hold a light meter to measure the exposure readings of different areas of the scene and make our best judgment of the appropriate exposure.

There’s no memory card to store the images — we need to mount a pre-loaded film holder to the back of the camera in order to take one single picture. Taking a second picture requires a new film holder.

There’s no room for errors — we had to adjust the focus, the aperture, the shutter speed on the camera, check and re-check every setting, test fire before taking the actual picture. And there’s always a haunting thought afterwards about forgetting to set everything correct.

With every press of the cable release, a half cup of Starbucks coffee was gone. Thank goodness, we only “drank” one full cup of coffee that morning.

The result is hardly satisfactory. Nevertheless it was a fun experience.

Revealing First Large Format (4×5) Photo

Twenty years ago, before I purchased my first SLR camera, Canon Rebel 2000, an old friend, my college roommate had pointed me an humorous online article [1] about the danger of entering into photography — it will be a long and costly journey. At the moment, I didn’t think too much about the warning signs ahead of me. But today, I come to report that everything told in that article became true.

If there is one takeaway in the article that has left the deepest impression to me, it is the size of the photographic negative decides the most about image quality. In order to pursue better image quality, starting from 35mm film camera, I’ve come through Xpan, 645, and 66 medium format cameras. But there is always a dream hidden in my heart — large format.

Large format is the ultimate crown jewelry. After two decades of photography, I finally step into this world, and purchased my first large format camera, the Intrepid Mark IV 4×5 field camera. I used it once during the recent trip to Eastern Sierra, and took the picture, North Lake Morning Reflection, with two sheets of Ilford Delta 100 4×5 black and white film. The result is phenomenon — the amount of details captured by this primitive camera far exceeds the pictures made by state-of-the-art Nikon D850 digital SLR camera. Please forgive the small picture shared here. It does not do justification to the real image.

[1] https://www3.xitek.com/papers/viewfinder/viewfinder1.htm