Traveling, photographing, and staying safe.

(It's been a busy few weeks, with a lot of images in progress, but none ready to post and talk about quite yet.
But because winter is approaching, and that makes traveling a whole more dangerous ( there's already been one big chain reaction accident in the California central valley thanks to tule fog), these thoughts are particularly relevant.....)

There have been a few news stories that have gotten anything from minor to major national media coverage in the last few years about people who have gotten into big trouble while traveling/hiking in the west.
James Kim, who died last winter while trying to use a 'shortcut' through the Oregon mountains to the coast, was... I am sorry to say... stupid. Driving down ANY unmarked mountain road with no center divider or route signs is hazardous, under any conditions - even if you are experienced and prepared. These are not publicly maintained roads, and as such, 'caveat emptor' - loosely translated as 'driver beware'!
There were numerous other 'risk factors' involved, but the guy ignored all of them - I guess he'd been spending too much time at a desk, and believed that if a road was shown on a Google map, that made it 'safe'.
No, sorry... that just means 'it exists(in some way/shape/form)' - and that's ALL it means.

A hiker in Yosemite recently fell to his death trying to climb to the top of Half Dome:
(SF Chronicle - 6/19/07)
"Deadly trek up Half Dome -
Rangers re-examining safety of popular hike after a fatal fall from cables during final ascent..."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/19/BAGHNQHLEV1.DTL&type=travelbayarea

The victim fell about 300 feet and landed on a ledge just before going over a cliff about 1,000 feet high - (the dome itself is 4,800 ft high).
"(the victim)..was not doing anything unsafe, according to the initial investigation".

How 'bout... just being there?
Click on the link above, and check out a picture of this trail.
No, not even the presence of Nat'l Park Service gaurantees your safety. They'll send a helicopter to scoop up yer bod...
and probably send your heirs the bill. Which, as a taxpayer, I hope they do - I don't want to pay for other people's stupidity.
(Alot of people seem to think that if they carry a cell phone, they can just call 911, and they'll get bailed out - yeah, right.
The helicopter that comes to save them will have to dodge between all the pigs that are flying, ya know?)

I have taken a similar trail, except it had no cables or safety precautions at all. It was at Canyon de Chelly (in Arizona) a few years ago. There is an NPS maintained road around the canyon, there are a number of places where you can turn off, park, and walk to a lookout/view of some sort.
There is one turnout parking lot that leads to a trail that goes down to the 'White House' ruins, a very well known place. That's one of the things I came (all the way from SF, CA.) to see. A sign at the beginning of the trail reads simply something like "Beware, hang onto your kids...". They don't make a big deal out of it.
Much of the trail is, indeed, easy.
However!......there is one section about 30 or 40 feet long that is simply a notch carved in a 75 degree angle cliff. It is not neat and clean, there's alot of gravel/crumbling rock to negotitate, and it's 2 feet wide, at the very most. There are no cables to hang onto, at all.
If I slip/loose my footing and fall?...well, even if I survive the fall, it may be hours before anyone finds me, and hours more before I medical attention.
I managed to do it (in spite of my great fear of heights/vertigo/lousy knees and hips), and really enjoyed seeing 'the White House' (west coast version ;-) )........but I won't ever do that kind of trail again - next time I'll take the bus tour driven by the Navajo - they'll drive me (or you) there, much safer.

At the end of this trip, on the way back to good ol' S.F., Ca., I drove through such a windy storm on US 40 around Flagstaff that half the wheels on the big rigs in front of me left the ground, they were being blown so hard!
I've also driven thru tule fog in the central valley that limited visibility to near zero.
In both cases, I was only too happy to take the next exit, and give my credit card a 'work-out' at whatever motel and restaurants I found. ( I don't watch hardly any television anymore, but every once in a while, channel-surfing cable TV in a motel room w/ a fresh pack of smokes and a bottle of wine is an excellent diversion.)

The bottom line on all this is:
I now have a rule of thumb I ask myself before I do anything that looks the least bit risky:
"If the worst that can possibly happen, happens... is the damage survivable/tolerable?"
If the answer is 'no'... then I don't do it!
Life is dangerous, nothing will change that...
as Warren Zevon put it so well:
"Life'll kill ya"!
...Just don't give it any more chances to do that then there already are......!!

That way we will all be around to trade travel stories.... and images :-)

Back into the darkroom - October 6 & 7

I started this session on a Saturday..
( i tend to set up the darkroom over the weekend - start saturday,
continue on sunday, and wrap it all up sunday PM)
w/ two basic image ideas:

#1 - the 'bales of something', wrapped in white plastic, ( hay, maybe?..don't get carried away here - just because it's in California, it doesn't mean these are bales of marijuana!) ..taken somewhere out on Pt Reyes ( there are still some functioning farms that exist there)...
I saw them as bales of clouds ( and not 'bales that turned into clouds', there IS a difference)
For the moment, i have titled this one 'Mysterious product'.

#2 - Footprints in the sand - Also taken out at Pt. Reyes, a perfectly smooth slope of sand with perfectly lit footprints, leading to....? who knows where.

Though I really like printing on 16x20", the last few years I've been sticking with 11x14" - I'm tending to work faster, make more prints, and in a relatively small apartment I just run out of room to deal with & dry a dozen 16x20" sheets.
I usually do four sheets with the initial exposure, use #1 to see how the second exposure works/completes the image... and I still have three more to work with.
(For a more detailed description of how I do my montage images, go to:
http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/DarkRm2/index.html)

I found a relatively satisfactory sky to complete the bales on the first pass. I did a couple more, with some slight variation in the position of the clouds, and by the time I got to #4, it was time to spice things up, and add a bit of icing on the cake.
I chose a detail from a negative made at a Ca. State Park north of Jenner, that preserves an old Russian settlement, and has various rooms furnished authentically from the 1800's. This detail shows a desk in front of a window, with various items on it - they had the right light on them ( & a sort of 'blown out' background). so that was it - print # 4 of 4, done!

The footprints?... well, that was a bit more difficult.
I did one print on saturday (second print of the day), that had the basic elements in roughly the right place...
but it just wasn't coming together.
I 'slept on it' - I do that, a lot.
On Sunday, I decided it was worth the effort to do this one again - it just kept nagging me, being 'close, but not quite'.
So I exposed 4 sheets, w/ just the foot prints. This time round, I found the perfect position/size for the sky - it almost felt like the person who left the footprints was creating the hole in the sky. That first print worked just fine for me, that was a keeper... but what about the decaying sign?....Hhmmmm....
I burned it in, in three different ways...... not sure which works best, yet.
What do you think?
www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_DkRm_10_07/index.html