Death Valley 2022/23

[DAW89446]

98% of what you see on this thread is from my iPhone.  I’m a retired professional photographer and you just can’t beat the quality to weight ratio on these hikes.  Any night photography is on my Nikon D810.  I process in Photoshop or Lightroom mostly.  In Lightroom I can export a smaller size image (~1000px long side) which makes uploading easier on data (and poor cell reception) and also on my storage capacity.  I host images on my Wordpress account and paste links in on the forum.

I remember your using your iPhone. Phone cameras have improved dramatically and, as you state, always with us. I use my cell phone camera far more than my digital camera. And though an inexpensive phone, it takes better video than my dedicated video cameras I’ve had over the years.

I also use an old version of Photoshop. My late father was a professional photographer and always had the latest version. He’d give me his old versions until my computer started choking on them due to limited memory, etcetera. I still use an old Toshiba laptop running Windows Vista and enhance all my photos with that, storing all my stuff on a couple of 1TB portable hard drives.

For images I have shared over the years, I use a freeware called Irfanview. Years ago, when I had my website, I was told by a now deceased colleague that Irfanview created the smallest file sizes without negatively effecting resolution. When I had my website, I was still living in a dialup world, thus making it easier to upload images. My habit has been to make images 750 pixels on the long side.

I have greatly enjoyed your images and it amazes me that one can do all that you’ve shared in the backcountry with a cell phone to create and to share. In 2002, camping in the sites of Furnace and Greenwater, I was impressed at being able to talk with my wife and even my insurance carrier using a flip phone. I had Verizon in those days. Nowadays I suppose one could run a large corporation with a small device in the palm of one’s hand where there is no visible sign of human habitation.