Yosemite portrait
This photograph is from a Yosemite backpacking trip back in 2001. This was my big break from work during which I took several trips both international and throughout the US. One of those domestic trips was a ‘family’ backpacking trip in Yosemite with Karl’s family and a few stragglers (including me).
I took this picture of Cindy, sitting along the ridge of Yosemite Valley, just around the corner from Yosemite Falls. I was going for a farily typical environmental portrait, placing emphasis on the individual while still providing details of the surrounding area. In this case, the valley assisted in the set up. First, the sheer distance between the subject and the valley floor (3000 feet straight down, well over a mile to the trees and mountains in the background) provides a good separation and easy focus isolation. Second, the frequent campfires in the valley campgrounds create a hazy distance, which bumps up the relative clarity of the near subject.
This picture would have been taken with my Contax camera (I’m fairly certain) though it could also have been one of my earlier Nikons. I most likely would have been shooting a Kodak color negative film. My negs and slides are in deep storage now so I can’t know for sure without digging. It was printed at Photoworks though and then the print was scanned back in on a Canon flatbed scanner – that was how I did things back then. That I know because of the ’sloppy’ full borders around the image.
