"Estes Pinnacle Pine," from a perch above town I always walk to within a day or so on first arriving back. Digital photo from August 2000 on a Canon A5. One of the first digital cameras to actually take a great image for 1995. Can anyone picture that little camera still?
The image is of a very large stunted pine perched on a windswept cliff, the golden gray-greenish rock formations so prevalent all around the area, jutting up in what is now weathered clusters. I've never worked this image up into any of the digital builds I've made for the 'South by Southwest,' 'America: Lost & Found,' or 'Roadscape' series.
The Canon A5 made great images for its day, but within a few years, the small scale of the images, the low resolution of 180ppi & quirky slow motion processing time between shots made it a labor of love to work with by 1999. By then I'd learned to work with its strengths & overlook its faults.
I became really attached to it, in time, over he next eight years, buying them up off of eBay when ever I saw one. By 1999, they were selling for $25-35; by 2005? $5 for one bought in original shrink-wrapped box, mint condition!
I'll add this & end my praise for it: I bought it by default while I was down in New Orleans, February 1996, helping an artist friend move there. He paid $1680.00 for it, hated it within an hour, cursed up a blue streak (not something never done in the Crescent City) & swore it was a piece of...well... it wasn't. I offered him $1500 for it & he tossed it across the room to me. I bought it mainly to make images of my paintings for the internet, my sales & collectors' records.
Within a year, I found it could take some interesting shots. To me, it's the Diana of the digital cameras. I'll be unpacking the mint condition ones soon, to add a tier to 'The Parkways Projects," in which I'm photographing the Blue Ridge & Skyline Drive parkways currently & telling the story of seven family vacations through the turbulent 1960's to 1972, and more...
"Estes Pinnacle Pine," 2025 #HybridWorks #Art #DigitalCompositeImage #RockyMountainNationalPark
#treetuesday #rockytuesday #woodland #Colorado
#EstesParkCO is deeply missedI'm in SC, working on this: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social 🦉🍁 #FineArt
#EastCoastKin #Landscape #DigitalArt #Nature #Bluesky