August 2012

Sept. 13, 2012
Another big trip - and a plenty of pictures. This time we chose to travel to California, mainly to see Yosemite National Park but also other parts of Sierra, San Francisco, and the coast. I left the battery charger from my Nikon D90 in Slovakia by mistake, and my mom had to send it to NYC afterwards. It was not clear whether it arrives before we take off to San Francisco but it actually did - on the very same day. However, by that time I decided to try taking pictures the good old-fashioned way - on film rolls (I used Ektar ISO 100 for color, and Ilford FP4 ISO 125 for b&w). Unfortunately, I have a crappy scanner which in addition I forgot to clean before scanning. Some scanned images even had visible Stanko's fingerprints (he loves to open and close the cover) but those I have fixed :).

The first photo (or three of them) I've made at Travertine Hot Springs near Bridgeport on the eastern side of Sierra Nevada. They were tiny but spectacular and so was the bathing. I got very upset when I noticed that the film is not rolling, and pressed the shutter twice more in pure desperation, not knowing how to fix the problem on the spot. I don't think that the picture is all that interesting but it's the story behind it that makes it dear to me. After all, I've got a photo somewhat faithfully capturing that beautiful evening, the photo I didn't hope to have when the stuck film accident happened.

The second photo was made by Michal at Vernal Fall which even in late August was incredibly powerful. What an experience it must be to see it in April or May!

The third photo shows the iconic Half Dome. How could one forget about that one :). The whole gallery (or better said, the portion of photos I scanned) is here.