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Utah Ho! (November 2009)

Hmmm, my last entry about snow seems a long time ago now, and I seem to start a lot of these entries with an apology - I guess I should just accept that I'm useless at keeping the web site up-to-date. I haven't been slacking on the photography front though. When the weather inspires I've been out with the camera, so I have some new slides to get scanned, and winter is often a good time to catch up on such chores.

As you probably guessed from the title, I've just returned from Utah: I was there for 2 weeks, and back for the first time since October 2002 - must be the 7-year itch kicking in! By now you know my attraction to North West Australia I'm sure...and when I pondered what draws me to Utah I realised that it has exactly the same kind of landscapes and colour pallette - Sandstone and deep blue skies...and not many people if you get off the beaten track a bit, which is easy. And just like my best outback experiences I get to enjoy plenty of campfires and sleeping under the stars, which for photography really helps put you in touch and in tune a bit closer with nature.

This was a hugely enjoyable trip and left me puzzled as to how I ever let 7 years slip by without dropping in. I hope to rectify that, and am hatching plans to return before the year's out - hopefully with a 5x4 camera at last: it really takes that format to do justice to the scale and beauty of the Utah landscapes I think. For the meantime I'm savouring the fading memory of this last trip and poring over the photos and video footage. So I'll have some new shots for the site as soon as I can organise some scanning.

A big hello to friends from this trip: Victoria; Henrike & Tobias; Deanna, Jim, Giselle & Sasha; Cabin 10 Cedar City...and a few other fellow travellers along the way whose sense of fun brightened each day.

Just a snapshot from my camcorder from now as a taster »

This is a view from the Angel's Landing walk on our way up.

Footnote: I now have a 5x4 inch camera and a couple of wide lenses (a Schneider 65mm and the Nikon 90mm off my 612 camera - equivalent in 35mm camera terms to 20mm and 27mm approx). The 5x4 world is weird and bothersome and painfully slow and somewhat uncertain, but I'm sure the results will make it all worthwhile. I was out yesterday with it for the first time, trying to get used to composing upside down and back-to-front (it's like flying a plane with your back to the cockpit window). Adjusting the plane of focus using all the camera movements muddies the water even more. Compared to this pushing a thin rope is not at all frustrating :)

Footnote 2: For 8 years now I've been getting a lot of fuzzy photos from my 6x7 camera, despite using a tripod, mirror lock-up, etc. I always put this down to the huge shutter (maybe it was prone to vibration) and I just shot lots more than I needed in the hope of a perfect one somewhere in the mix. This was quite wasteful of film and processing costs, not to mention incredibly frustrating, especially when I traipse half way round the world and come back with 5 out of 6 shots affected. I was on the brink of selling it once and for all, but after Utah I noticed quite a few shots were soft at infinity in the upper part of the frame but not at infinity lower down, so I began to suspect film flatness was faulty and maybe a simple £120 service would sort the problem out. I spoke to a repair technician, describing the problem and symptoms, and it now seems my battered old Pentax 67 will soon be quite the spring chicken again - at least where film flatness is concerned. I'm looking forward to getting back into the field with it; I really was going to miss my super-sharp 105mm and super contrasty 45mm lenses.