Re: [pct-l] cameras and pictures

[Greg Hummel <ghummel@hydrogenburner.com>]

Goforth wrote:

>. . . Hay all you
>past thruhikers, did you just stop taking pictures half way thru?  Did you
>want more film at the end , have you used and looked at the photos since
>your hike?  What are the photos that you value the most?

I took along an old Kodak instamatic point and shoot, no focus, plastic camera that took fair pictures.  You can't beat the light weight but sacrifice in picture quality.  I would have brought along a better quality camera if I did it again now.  I now use a small Rolei camera that isn't made anymore but looks about as heavy as the new quality, tiny point and shoot cameras.  It is a 35 mm and is focusable, f stop and film speed adjustable.  It takes excellent pictures, as good or better than my full size SLR!

My favorite pictures from The Hike, two decades later (which is the perspective that we all take pictures for anyway, isn't it?) are those that combine people and nature's beauty in the same pict.  Pictures of myself are favored by my kids and friends as a record of my striking skinniness, radical hair and faraway look in my eyes!  Paul Hacker (also '77er) and I just shared our slides for the first time last spring.  Upon seeing one of my more embarrassing pictures with long, skinny, pale white legs exposed called me "The Great Albino African Zulu Warrior".  We laughed over that one for days!  

Pictures of the groups of people that I spent time with are valued and those people that I met along the way.  Pictures of the really dangerous places, like Forrester Pass, and the very trying times, like looking out of my tent door into swirling clouds of rain into a dark forest, are also valued.  

I had the most excellent task of developing Martina and Brian's film from their thru hike this year as they were concerned about not having it developed soon enough.  I saw slide after slide after slide of beautiful vistas of green valleys and snow capped peaks in the north Cascades and remembered that I had culled out many of these seemingly repetitious slides from my now set-in-concrete two carousels.  There just are so many beautiful vistas along the PCT and these repetitively shown to unconcerned audiences become boring (but we know differently because we saw them first hand and they mean so much more to us!).  Putting yourself and your co-hikers into these scenes will keep the audiences awake and interested and your memories equally bright.

A few curious pictures are always laughed at, things like my brother's taped toes, all except one pinky, or the view straight down from the skeleton frame of the bridge over the Klamath River north of Yreka (not on the PCT), or the chipmunk in my gorp bag.

DON'T THROW THE CAMERA OUT!  IT IS ONE OF THE FEW LIFELINES THAT YOU WILL ADHERE TO IN THE COMING DECADES.

IMHO,

Greg "Strider" Hummel

Take long strides . .  .   .    . * From the Pacific Crest Trail Email List |  http://www.backcountry.net   *
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