Photos by melekzek

Resurrection Story: In a late afternoon in 94, I placed a cup of hot tea on a blank envelope. Later, I figured that all the slides from the last climb was inside this envelope, still in plastic waiting to be framed. Melted plastic merged with the film, and it was a mess. I never showed these slides to anybody after this destruction, but I also never could throw them away. Years later, in a procrastinating state of mind, trying to do something else but my thesis, I sit down to work on this slide. With the help from DICE I manage to get an almost clean scan, and cleaned the rest in PS. The other lost slide is here

Resurrection Story: In a late afternoon in 94, I placed a cup of hot tea on a blank envelope. Later, I figured that all the slides from the last climb was inside this envelope, still in plastic waiting to be framed. Melted plastic merged with the film, and it was a mess. I never showed these slides to anybody after this destruction, but I also never could throw them away. Years later, in a procrastinating state of mind, trying to do something else but my thesis, I sit down to work on this slide. With the help from DICE I manage to get an almost clean scan, and cleaned the rest in PS. The other lost slide is here

Quintessential Caption: Getting back to bouldering after a back injury, Berna is crimping strong on this V9.

What it really means: Berna is trying to stick to the starting holds on this pathetic lowball one move wonder. Spot me, will you?

There are far too many "really really hard" bouldering pictures in this site, and I do not believe the captions in half of them. This picture you might ask, it is not V9, and I do not think it is even V4 as listed in dr. topo. There are a lot harder v0 slab problems in jtree.

Both images are shot at the same time (give or take a couple seconds). You can see how much a photograph can distort the reality. The second photographs credit goes to buzbas , who btw was the only one from our group to make that single move.

If the image looks posed, well, it is. Summer and desert does not sound nice together, and nobody was in hidden valley campground for a couple of days. Well, nobody except me. The weather was actually nice, I do not mind dry heat after suffering through the humid summers of texas. I shoot the image with a tripod and timer, so there is some "waiting for the shutter click" there. BTW, the image is also photoshopped, mainly to edit the tonalscale.

No, I do not have a necklace, those are my hair braids.

If you think this image is posed (like the other from the series "alone in joshua"), well you are almost right. I tried to pose, but I could not set the timer to shoot multiple images, but single shot only. So, I would set the camera, run to the boulder and start climbing, and trying to reach to the crux to pose before the 10 sec delay. I never made to the crux in time, and ended up with a bunch of ugly looking images. This image is the best, I still ended up looking like a gumby hanging from the first easy moves. After a couple of moves higher, I could not commit to the crux move anyhow, so it (me looking gumby) is kind of appropriate.

Technotes: Eos5, 19-35 at 19mm, tripod, 4-5pm roughly 1 hour before the sunset, tmax400 b&w film, stiched 6 images using PS, and the sepia-like coloring is done using PS color balance tool.

Resting on sunbaked smooth surface of a boulder, i had to take this picture.

Can you spot the climber?

Technotes: Eos5, 100-300 at 100mm, handheld, tmax-400 b&w film, 5 images stiched in PS. Before anybody comments on my choice of 100mm, and that i could have used 1 (or 2) wide angle images, let me remind you about iso-400 film grain. Although I do enjoy film grain, i did not wanted any in this image, since i want to capture the smooth and blobby appearence of the joshuatree rocks. Unlike this one i might say, where I tried to take advantage of the film grain to emphasize the structure of the rocks.

[edit] I was not satisfied my previous take of this image, so i process it again and resubmit.

tech mumbo jumbo: It is 13 images shot vertically at 19mm using tmax400 b&w film. I scan them at medium resolution, not to bring my computer to its knees. None of the programs I tried could make the panorama, 19 mm is a bit too much deformed at the edges. Heck, shooting without a tripod did not help either I guess. I created 7 partial panoramas using 3 images each time, and blend them together in PS. Some paint work required, but I manage to get the complete panorama. The final image is 10000x2000.

The image being 360 degrees, I actually have the opportunity to play with the order of items, alternative frames could be seen here, here, or here.

The title credit goes to mingleefu.

This (almost) 360 degree image is put together using 10 wide angle images. Some hand painting required, since I shoot the images without stopping the jumpy ride.

olive looks seriously concerned, i guess she is expecting me to fall from the tractor anytime.