“A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.”
-Ansel Adams(1902-1984)


Yosemite

Ever since I saw the powerful, dramatic and influential black & white images of Ansel Adams, I had always wanted to visit Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada. The park was created in 1890 by setting aside a large parcel of land in the Sierra Nevada that stretches along Eastern California.It ranges from 2000 feet above sea level to more than 13,000 feet.The Yosemite landscape was formed 500 million years ago when the Sierra Nevada was below the sea.

I am a long time amateur photographer, concentrating on black & white landscapes and seascapes with the occassional Kodachrome transparencies. My equipment of 18 years is a Nikon FM equipped with a 28mm f2.8 wide angle, 75~150 mm f 3.5 E series Nikon zoom and a 50mm f 1.4 normal lens.
I finally got to Yosemite in March 2002 with the sole purpose of doing some serious landscape photography. No sooner i got there the Nikon body decided to call it a day and i was left with my recently aquired Olympus D460 digital zoom camera which had hardly been tried out. Neverthess i purchased an additional smart card of 128MB, set the camera to "auto ASA", Super High Quality and hoped to come back with some decent images to remember.

The Olympus D460 was rated one of the more popular digital models of its time with 1.3 million pixel capacity, macro zoom, auto focus, programmable flash modes and several other functions including an LCD monitor. I had never tried this camera out nor had any previous experience with digital imaging. From a Nikon FM, I was now virtually in the point and click category. Not having a choice (there being no repair facilities for the Nikon anywhere nearby) i decided to make the best of what i had.

I was pleasantly suprised when i downloaded the images and viewed them on my Compaq laptop back home in India. the images were crystal clear, with excellent sharpness, a wide range of colours, good contrast and colour saturation. The CAMEDIA software provides the option to edit the images at a later date. The results were beyond my expectations and had me hooked on digital imaging. Prints made upto 8.5x11.0 inches on matt paper were sharp with good colour saturation and contrast and acceptable for display purposes. Prints on the HP inkjet printer set to maximum resolution are slow to print but its worth the effort. The 128MB smart card allows about 250 SHQ images before you need to download. An ideal storage medium when travelling. I have since upgraded to a Nikon D100 with a 24~85 and a 70~300 mm nikon zoom which gives file sizes of 17-18MB TIFF.

Being an ardent admirer of Ansel Adams and his work i tried to follow his guideline to pre-visualise the final image before releasing the shutter. Some of my favourite images are here from Yosemite.Most of the images required no cropping in the computer.