High with the Nikon F100 and TMax 400.

I find myself truly most at home in Nature, away from the urban surroundings close to home.

Not so long ago my main outdoor activities implied searching for and exploring caves and, even though I’d love to I haven’t done much mountain climbing, yet. On the last time on the higher side I was fortunate to visit with some friends La Malinche Volcano in Mexico and I of course brought my camera with me, two cameras indeed, my recent image making machine of choice, the Nikon F100, and a Nikon D200 for the more immediate digital experience and as a backup just in case.

In the end I made more images with the D200 than with the F100, in several scenarios I used both cameras mostly before sunrise to experiment a bit with low light and see how much I could push the film limits in those conditions and trying to avoid the use of the tripod since the main goal of our visit was to reach the summit in time.

Here is a selection of my most liked images made with film that day. I hope you enjoy it.

Image made while climbing La Maliche volcano, Tlaxcala, Mexico. Nikon F100, Kodak TMAX 400 film. ©Eduardo Mendoza. November 2017.

Image made while climbing La Maliche volcano, Tlaxcala, Mexico. Nikon F100, Kodak TMAX 400 film. ©Eduardo Mendoza. November 2017.

Climbing La Maliche volcano, Tlaxcala, Mexico. Nikon F100, Kodak TMAX 400 film. ©Eduardo Mendoza. November 2017.

Image made while climbing La Maliche volcano, Tlaxcala, Mexico. Nikon F100, Kodak TMAX 400 film. ©Eduardo Mendoza. November 2017.

Image made while climbing La Maliche volcano, Tlaxcala, Mexico. Nikon F100, Kodak TMAX 400 film. ©Eduardo Mendoza. November 2017.

Image made while climbing La Maliche volcano, Tlaxcala, Mexico. Nikon F100, Kodak TMAX 400 film. ©Eduardo Mendoza. November 2017.

The eternal dilemma, color or B&W

What is your photography style, color or B&W?

The debate on this has been around for long I know, having the choice of what film stock to use at the moment of loading the camera, and even easier with the advent of digital photography that many take for granted these days, so easy in fact that you can choose any moment

I truly love the feel of a Black & White image, the emphasis on the light, composition, shapes, volumes and textures yields something special about it, even when it’s about Nature I love to render it in B&W, contrary to the more documentary or scientific approaches where color becomes very important. In this example of a large tree rooted in the basement of an ancient Maya building in Quintana Roo, Mexico, the color rendering of my Fujifilm camera did a lot of justice to the scene, so after some tweaking in the computer at some point I just wanted to see how it’d look when turning it into B&W, and it just seemed like magic.

Artists are prone to see things through a feelings filter though. Days later I took a look at the color version, and I just also loved it too, since then I’ve gone back and forth between the two versions without being able to make up my mind about which one to share with you, so here are both, please tell me which you like the most. Fujifilm XT10, 18-55mm lens, developed in Luminar.