Peak construction, Pt.III (in color)

I heard recently that the old summit house on Pike’s Peak has been closed “indefinitely,” though I think they mean permanently because they’ve been working on tearing it down.  The new summit house has is supposed to be finished by the end of Spring.  I knew this was coming so I was taking as many pictures of the old place whenever I got the chance.

Part I is here; you didn’t miss Part II, it is all black & white and has yet to be developed; chronologically though I shot all that stuff before this, which was in part to retest my F Apollo’s shutter after leaving it cocked overnight, plus putting nearly a whole roll through the chrome F2 that I picked up around the same time.

I hope that the pictures are useful someday and I already miss what the place used to be.  As more and more people come to the 2nd most-visited mountain in the world the more sanitized and Disneyfied it’s become, to be more palatable to the lowest common denominator of consumers.  Now I’m seeing a lot of railings and walkways, pavement, fences, guardrails: things demanded by poor drivers and idiots to make them feel safer.  By the time the construction is finished I fear there will be nothing left of the natural mountain.

Mule deer procession

This is the road my mom’s house is on; I was just getting off work for the day and had been testing out (in order): my black F Apollo, a chrome F, and a chrome F2 Photomic (I’ve been building up the system).  I had moved on to my black F2A for the last few shots, and found an aspen tree on my mom’s road that had turned a dark red (rather rare, though I saw more this year than ever before); the sun was setting and I just happened to be there at the perfect time for the sun to light up the leaves.  I also happened to be there at the perfect time to see a family of mule deer cross the road:

Perhaps you remember from an earlier post just how friendly the deer can be around here?  Well they didn’t come right up to me and say hello but they certainly didn’t give me a second thought even though I was probably 6-8 feet away from them when I shot this series.

One for the peepers

I think I saw more red-colored aspen trees this year than previously and I believe it’s something to do with the amount of rain if I’m not mistaken.  Before this I shot two rolls of slide film in my new F2A, which I will get around to developing eventually.  So this color is a little bit past its top level but still pretty good.  I shot maybe 40 rolls of black & white in 2020 (plus 4×5 sheets as well) and maybe 5 rolls of color, all around September/October.

(that last one is currently my desktop background)

This is my first roll of Ektar 100 in nearly 4 years; for some reason I’ve just never really clicked with this film but I’m still willing to give it a chance every once in a while.  I hope that I’ll get it eventually but as far as Kodak color film goes I think I’m going to like Ektachrome 100 more and even Gold 200 has done better for me in the past.  I suppose that Ektar will really shine in medium format and as I am in the process of moving that direction I will be giving Ektar 100 even more chances…

All this equipment…Tri-X edition

Shooting a couple rolls of Super 8 film back in April 2020 during lockdown.  So here is the time delay between the immediacy of the digital camera on my phone and getting film developed, getting around to scanning it, and finally getting to the order in the queue.  But hopefully it was worth the wait!

It was more to test out my cameras than anything, but if I put my mind to it I might be able to turn it all into an “experimental” short.