As the snow accumulates and the days get shorter, I find myself daydreaming of the next trip, the next adventure, the next photo safari.
Ever since my parents took us on an epic road trip in the summer of 1985, visiting places like Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, I have had wanderlust.
After 17 years of teaching and the ability to catch up with former students on Facebook, I have friends in nearly every corner of the country. One former soccer player of mine now works as a guide for the Yosemite Mountaineering School.
UPDATE March 27, 2013: While looking through the fire safe, I saw the stack of slides and negatives I have collected over the years. I spent hours digging around the rest of the house looking for CDs of these images that I thought I had gotten scanned.
When my search was unsuccessful, I bought a cheap scanner on eBay. In my initial barrage of learning this new toy, I found three negatives from that very first trip to Yosemite – such a pivotal, formative few weeks in my life.
Here are my first impressions of Yosemite captured in dusty, scratched negatives:
I thought it would be neat to leave these scans in their condition, before Photoshopping out the blemishes. Someday I may revisit them and touch them up, but these represent that perfect family summer vacation, scratches and all.