When I was sixteen I had a chance to travel to Yosemite and went to Mono Lake. There are some images (not here, not today) that survived but the bulk of the film I shot, I throw away instead of developing it during a move. I sometimes wonder what shots were cast out, but I don’t really regret my choice.
In college, I took a science class that centered around a 10-day road trip to the Grand Canyon and back to Portland. I had my mom’s Ricoh and an Argus that I’d had since middle school on the Yosemite trip. Neither camera produced the images I wanted with the film I wanted to shot with (TMAX 3200). For the science class, I had my Nikon FM2 and an ample supply of 3200, plus a roll of infrared. Death Valley (below, left) destroyed the infrared, which came out all white when developed. I keep the 3200 in the cooler, but it was damaged a little bit too. Cathedral Gorge (below, middle) was the first geological anomaly (after the Oregon Gorge) on our trip. Strangely, this trip allowed me to circle by Mono Lake (below, right) almost exactly 10 years to the day that I visited it the first time.
These next two are Swan Island in Portland. They were taken with the same Nikon about eight months before I left for Korea.
And there’s this one (below). Shot with my mom’s Ricoh when I was fifteen in Oakland, California. This was the only time I used color as a teenager.
