Finding this poorly exposed photograph sparked an explosion of happy memories for me.

 

A few weeks ago I was sorting through some old negatives to try out the film-scanning capabilities of my flatbed scanner.  I came across some strips of 120-size negatives shot with a Yashica Mat-124 twin-lens reflex camera, and smiled when I saw what was on those negatives.  It was April of 1980, and the photography club at my high school was taking its annual Easter vacation trek to Yosemite Valley.  Skip Loomis, the photography teacher at my high school (then and still), put together all the ingredients for our life-transforming experience.  It was my first time in Yosemite and I was so excited to go.  In my youth I was already a huge fan of Ansel Adams and, for me, Yosemite was nearly synonymous with Ansel Adams — I could hardly make a sentence with just one of those names and not use the other.

 

Something magical happened during that trip.  We young photographers had a common goal: to experience Yosemite through the eyes of our cameras.  But we also developed a unique social bond.  Two months later, the seniors in the club put together a slide show chronicling the photography club experiences of that school year, including many pictures of us in Yosemite.  That slide show was put to the music of Seals and Crofts, “We May Never Pass this Way Again”, and I remember well a sequence of slides at the end of the song, showing a group of us crossing a bridge and going out of sight.  It was an incredibly poignant moment and I realized then just how lucky we were to have had this experience and how powerfully photography could touch one’s soul.

 

Yosemite has been near and dear to my heart ever since that first trip.  I went back a few times during my college years, including with my bride for our honeymoon.  I even named my business, YoSemiTek, in part after Yosemite.

 

The technology I use has gotten better since that humble start with a $40 (used) Yashica TLR, and my command of the tools has gotten better, too.  But the image above — as rough as it is — was a fine reminder of what photography can do to enrich our lives.  I can only hope that the images I create now (with better equipment and better technique) will have as strong an impact in the future as this image from the past has on me now.