Picture of the week - January 29, 2010

Location: Dana Point, California, 2006

We headed to San Diego for a family reunion. The family on my mothers side. My cousin Ruja lives there. We flew to San Francisco, rented a car, and drove south on the old Highway 1. We planned the trip meticulously. We planned on driving maybe three hours a day, and spend the rest site seeing. beaching, resting and so on. We also drove ridiculously slowly, stopping often to let others pass. We were in no hurry. It was a superb trip, highly recommended.

The second last leg of the trip took us past Los Angeles. We had no choice but to drive 7 hours, mostly on the main highway, attempting to bypass as much of LA as possible. We finally ended up at our destination, Dana Point.

The hotel we had booked sat high on a hill overlooking the bay. We were tired, looking forward to dinner and a bit of rest. I took some pictures overlooking the bay, the light was disappearing, not a good time for pictures. I finally decided to call it quits and started reading a book, my camera resting on the stone wall designed to prevent us from catapulting into the abyss.

These two ladies were talking a mile a minute on the balcony above me. It was really irritating. They had these high nasal voices designed to grate on your nerves, sending you to the closest Asylum for the Insane. I tried to ignore them. It was very hard. They went on and on about nothing in particular. Through the fog of attempting to ignore the conversation, I heard one of them say Oh my God, look at that. Someone should take a picture.

I looked up.

She was right.

I did take a picture.

A note about the format. This picture was taken on film using a very old Mamiya C330 Professional Dual Lens camera. The Professional moniker is a marketing thing. This camera manufactured between 1969 and 1974. It is, what we call, a medium format camera. It takes square pictures. The pictures are printed on 6cm x 6cm paper. The resolution is extremely high. The digital versions of these cameras come in at 33 or 56 megapixels. The camera is still in good condition.