[LargeFormat] A Yosemite Moment

[Wilkes, Don MSER:EX]

Hi gang,

I'm back from my trip to Yosemite and the rest of California (unbelievably
hot for late September), and thought I'd share an "Adams moment" with you.

On the second or third morning there, we took the car to see if we could
find a place along the Merced River we'd noticed when we'd first entered the
park, with very large boulders in the river, and the usual spectacular
scenery all about.  Driving through the valley, El Capitan came looming up
on our right, and just to its left was a 3/4 moon. Ack!  I pulled over into
a convenient gravel pull-out, and started hauling out the equipment.  Before
I'd even had the old Calumet rail up on the Tiltall, there were four or five
more cars in the pull-out, with folks wailing away on their (minature)
cameras.

Realizing that the moon traverses the sky a lot faster than you'd otherwise
think, I worked much faster than I would have liked, thining furiously about
exposure and framing.  I didn't have a lot of options on the latter, but
found a spot that was at least decent, made my last calcuulations and
tripped the shutter.  There was just time to go for one more, with a #12
filter.  Damn!  The compendium lens holder's filter drawer is too big for
the gel filter!  Holding it very gingerly by the folded back tissue, I had a
go at it, and think it probably was okay.

After I packed the filter away carefully, I looked up, and the moon was now
edging behind the mountain.  It was a close thing, and gave me "Moonrise"
sort of goosebumps...

I haven't developed that neg yet, but can hardly wait.  First, I want to
process a couple of others taken on the trip, to make damned sure my
processing is tickety-boo :}

Gotta run for my bus -- just thought I'd add that I bought one of the
"Special Edition" Adams prints at the gallery.  Nice little thrill to have
an actual Adams (although printed by someone else) hanging on my living room
wall.

Cheers!
\donw