N
Nihat Iyriboz
Guest
In 1980, I lived in Leyland, England. After work, as a new graduate from college working for Leyland Vehicles, I spent some of my evenings in the entertainment room of Stokes Hall that no longer exists.
I watched the big wall climbers on a television documentary, not knowing it was shot on the face of El Capitan. Then, I did not even know Yosemite existed. The friends I watched the documentary who were either rock-climbers or had strong interest and amazement with the sport.
On the film, the climbers were running sideways to catch the beginning of their next route in this seemingly impossible environment. The scenes were so dramatic and traumatic, and my friends reacted with verbal compliments to these crazy moves. I heard and learned a lot of new explicit phrases that evening. They all sounded like verses of a song in the local dialect that I did not understand much then.
The big walls, mountains can be quite misleading when we try to imagine their immense size. I always loved hiking and had my own under-estimations regarding the vastness of the mountains. That mis-calculation could be deadly, depending on the challenge, like El Capitan or Himalayas.
Here is a good example of the same place 30+ years later. Who'd know, eight years after I'd end up living close to it and photograph it. 4x5 view camera with Rodenstock Apo-Sironar-N 210mm/5.6 lens, Ilford FB4+ film with Ilfotech DD-X on tripod.
In the first image, on the upper left side of this 3000 feet monolith, there is a shadow area looking like a head profile with a mouth, a nose, an eye and a hitch-hike hand sign on the forehead. The cheek area is where the enlargement made from. The second image (the enlargement) contains two bivouacs and a climber between them.
I watched the big wall climbers on a television documentary, not knowing it was shot on the face of El Capitan. Then, I did not even know Yosemite existed. The friends I watched the documentary who were either rock-climbers or had strong interest and amazement with the sport.
On the film, the climbers were running sideways to catch the beginning of their next route in this seemingly impossible environment. The scenes were so dramatic and traumatic, and my friends reacted with verbal compliments to these crazy moves. I heard and learned a lot of new explicit phrases that evening. They all sounded like verses of a song in the local dialect that I did not understand much then.
The big walls, mountains can be quite misleading when we try to imagine their immense size. I always loved hiking and had my own under-estimations regarding the vastness of the mountains. That mis-calculation could be deadly, depending on the challenge, like El Capitan or Himalayas.
Here is a good example of the same place 30+ years later. Who'd know, eight years after I'd end up living close to it and photograph it. 4x5 view camera with Rodenstock Apo-Sironar-N 210mm/5.6 lens, Ilford FB4+ film with Ilfotech DD-X on tripod.
In the first image, on the upper left side of this 3000 feet monolith, there is a shadow area looking like a head profile with a mouth, a nose, an eye and a hitch-hike hand sign on the forehead. The cheek area is where the enlargement made from. The second image (the enlargement) contains two bivouacs and a climber between them.
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