About this Web Page

I have been taking photographs of my various hiking, camping and backpacking trips for a number of years now, and until recently have only shared these photographs with friends and family. As the number of pictures has increased, I have decided to share these with others. Not to mention the fact that I have spent enormous sums of money on these and had better start selling some.

Contained in these web pages are samples of many of the photos I have taken. Unfortunately there is not enough memory on this server to store the really high resolution versions of these photos containing the stunning detail that the originals have (more than 15 Mb for each image and in some cases more than 70Mb). Therefore to fit these pictures on this page, all these images are roughly 800x500 pixels in size. This is generally good enough to see a sharp picture on a computer monitor.

Each photograph is labeled with a location, and title. If your favorite location is not included I simply haven't gotten there yet. Since I am constantly traveling to new and different places I would love to hear about good places to go so please feel free to offer your suggestions. suggestions@johnmattson.com

Though the low-resolution pictures are freely available for personal viewing they are nevertheless protected by US Copyright laws. Therefore before distributing, using these pictures in a brochure, advertisement, web-page etc. please contact me sales@johnmattson.com to inquire about licensing arrangements.

About the verse

The old adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words", is so very true, and yet no matter how good the picture, much is missing. It seems that no matter how good the resolution, well chosen the subject or intense the color there is much missing from a good photograph. The smells, the wind, the crispness of the air, the scale or the sense of vertigo, are all missing when the photo is viewed by those not present when originally taken. I want to try to add some of these sensations back into selected photographs. Though I can not physically add those sensations to a digital image I will try to focus the imagination of the viewer on a thought which when combined with the photo enhance some of these sensations and allow the imagination to bring more of the photograph into view. This will be attempted here by combining a short verse to act as a focus for the imagination to take hold and draw the viewer into each photograph. Let the imagination soar, and experience each photo as a journey which starts with the imagination and then.....

Color

In the previous posting of this web page the pictures were color calibrated to my monitor. Unfortunately it has turned out that the color on my monitor was not properly calibrated. As of 9/1/98 the color has been calibrated using the RGB color calibration tools within Adobe Photoshop. If you notice that colors seem a bit off check to make sure your monitor has been color calibrated (using for example the utilities supplied with Adobe Photoshop). If you monitor has been color calibrated and the colors still seem odd, please contact me. webmaster@johnmattson.com

 Technical stuff

Until recently nearly all the photographs were taken using Kodak Ektar 25 film with an Olympus OM 10 camera and a 28mm Zuiko F2.8 lens. The most recent photographs have been taken with a Bronica ETRSI (6 x 4.5 format) camera and a f2.8, 50mm lens. This technical stuff means little except that these photographs can all be enlarged to sizes greater than about 16"x24' without noticeable grain or distortions. It also means that if you run across a guy laboring with a burgeoning backpack trying make it up one last hill, please don't laugh, it may be me and my camera equipment.