this shot has a special meaning for me, because the first time i witnessed this scene i was on a bike (bathing in sweat) climbing this mountain without a camera. so i vowed to come back with a camera on the first opportunity.

however, as i soon found out, due to local climathe, window for shooting is only a few days wide. come too early, and everything is green. come couple days later and all leaves have already fallen because of sudden winterish chill in this part of year.
so for the next 5 years (!!) i unsuccessfully came back each year and until this year i always missed the opportunity due to bad weather or bad planning (ie. lack of transportation in my case).
not this year though. i went through there in few day intervals on many occassions and shot on 3 different days to make certain i capture the best part.

so i win, at long last!

hence, due to huge amount of effort invested in this scene, expect at least one more shot, despite my policy. (:


kodak ektachrome 100vs.
20mm at f/2.8 at 1/60s.
full frame, no manipulations.



some may wonder as to why i used such large aperture in broad daylight... well, i wanted to make use of lens imperfections at wide apertures to produce vignette and blurrines around the corners (without photoshop, obviously). results are obvious.
(also, slide pronounces this difference due to its contrastiness; that's why vignetting is less visible on negative film which has wider latitude)


as to the slide film i used - this was my first encounter with VS version and i love it already. (VS stands for vivid saturation.) finally the real thing lives up to the marketing hype - for a change.