It is Everest season and here is one of my favorite images of “Chomolungma”, the mother Goddess of the Earth.

This post is to celebrate 2 things:
- that some of my friends will be very close to the summit at this moment (good luck and be safe!)
- That my new Pocket Guidebook, “Everest, Summit of the World” has been published and is available through Amazon.com and other places right now!
Read more about the guidebook here on 7summits.com or see the info below!
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“This book is packed with practical help and mountain wisdom, and is essential reading for anybody contemplating an attempt on Everest.”

(Lincoln Hall, Everest summiteer and survivor, and author of “Dead Lucky”)

Everest: Summit of the World, by Harry Kikstra

• 1 March 2009
• UK price £9.99
• 96pp+2pp map flap
• 117×145 mm;
• weight 112g/4oz
• ISBN: 978-1-898481-54-6

Of course you can buy it at amazon.com (click here).

Everest, Summit of Asia & the World,

by Harry Kikstra (7summits.com)

At 8848 m (29,028 ft) Mount Everest is the world’s highest peak. Even the trek to Base Camp is arduous. Climbers aiming for the summit must survive the extreme conditions of the ‘Death Zone’ and perform great feats of endurance.

The author describes how to prepare for and climb the popular ascent routes up Everest from both Nepal and Tibet, including

• advice on planning and organization
• how to prevent and manage altitude sickness
• practical advice on the use of oxygen and yaks
• how to choose your Everest route and expedition team
• detailed description of the Tibet (North-east Ridge) and Nepal (South Col) routes
• mapping, diagrams and over 50 colour photographs

It is the same size as the Aconcagua & Denali pocket guides and fits in most pockets, being only 115grams/4oz and 14.5 x 11.5 x 0.8cm in size (5.7 x 4.5 x 0.3 inch).

It can handle the snow, wind and cold you will meet on Everest without weakening the pages.

Paulo and his friends had come early in the season, preparing for the selling of Massai bracelets on the white beaches of Zanzibar. Besides being pretty fluently in Italian, his hidden cell-phone was another surprise that on one hand did not fit the picture, but on the other completed it

A great place to enter the new year. Half Dome in Yosemite park is a wonderful place, standing proud above the snowy valley. In summer it is relatively easy to hike up, that is: if you use the hiking trail going around and not the extreme routes on the face!

The evening before we were pitching our tent in the snow in the famous Camp 4, when a dark shape passed between me and the parking area nearby. A black bear walked, just 30 feet away, ignored us and continued his evening walk.

So close to San Francisco, there is still a lot of nature to be found and to be protected…

Usually I am not too fond of aquariums and definitely not of zoos, especially after having bene lucky enough to have seen so many animals in the wild. But when I got an invitation to see the famous aquarium of Monterey, I took a look.

Of course the otters (both seaotters as well as river otters) were the cutest, though confined to a very small space, compared to the ones we saw outside in the bay.

What impressed me most were the animals I hate the most when I am in the water with them: in an empty tank were several giant jellyfish floating as if imitating an active lavalamp. It was quite mesmerizing, to watch their bright orange colour flow fluidly against the hard blue of the basin (I have actually desaturated for the image above, as the natural colours looked to un-natural!).

The above is just one of them, in 4 successive shots. It made me realize that a large and wonderful part of our ExposedPlanet (which we silly enough call Earth, even though most of the surface is Water) is still hidden beneath sealevel…

This friendly old woman with a typical Peruvian highland hat was selling sweets on the street, part of daily life on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

Slowly she approached us, but after getting close she shyly turned to the local, regular customers

Cerro Plata is not much of a climb, merely a long hike up. But once you get closer to the summit of the about 6000m high mountain by battling against the cold wind and the effects of altitude, you will be rewarded with a special sight:
a view across the Argentinean Andes Range towards the South Face of the highest mountain outside Asia, Cerro Aconcagua, one of the 7 summits…

Hugging the shores of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world at about 3800m /13,000ft, lies Puno.

Just a few hours later this relaxed scene would be one big party when the yearly world renowned Diabladas Festival for the Virgin de La Candelaria (about 2.5 weeks every early February) had it’s local try-out with a several hundred brass musicians and hundreds of dressed-up dancers.

As anywhere in the world outside North America, East Asia and Western Europe, people take the time to relax, socialize and get warmed up by the sun.

More impressive than the Grand Canyon is this Horse-shoe-shaped cutout that the Colorado river made in the Arizona earth.

The colours and sense of scale are wonderful, I tried to capture this in a series of 5 images, merged together, as even the 16mm Wideangle could not capture the grandeur.

Dreamy, impressive place, Nature at its best.

If you want to find out where the two people, the boat and the house are on this image, or just want to loose yourself in the scenery, you can order it as a large print on my Landscapes Gallery here; it can be printed at ImageKind.com’s massive size easily (though it will then be too big for their framing).

Stitched together using 5 RAW images from my 5D Mark II, shot at ISO 400, 27mm, F14, 1/100

PS: I had added the following originally:
“This small version/preview does not do justice to the image and the scenery. I guess that some info was lost when I downsized this 300mb Tiff file ”
I just reuploaded the file as the original was in the Prophoto RGB color profile and only Safari would show it properly (and tweaked FireFox as well). With the current Adobe sRGB colourspace, all browsers should show the same and now the print you will receive when rdering an enlargement will resemble the above much better.

Thanks to the ImageKind community for some insights and discussions, see the thread here on the forum, where I just posted this comment:

“Hmm, many hours, 50 websites, several terabytes and one migraine later, I think it is starting to dawn on me.

Guess I will have to convert and re-upload less vibrant images (8-bit sRGB) so at least they are represented well and buyers get what they see, independent of browser.

Some day I will have time to write it up, for now, here are some useful links which might help others:

- Flickr discussion about sRGB, Prophoto, Calibration
- About FireFox secret ICCV settings which will be official in – FF3.5 (right now they misrepresent Colour profiles, beware!

- Excellent overview with examples on website of lightRoom plugin developer.

- : free photoviewer that is not only much faster than Vista’s, but also supports colour profiles.
-  About Colour management in LightRoom

Hope this helps others. Still would like some IK response, guess I will Tweet them now (follow me here: http://twitter.com/exposedplanet)

Cheers, Harry aka ExposedPlanet

Ps: I just re-uploaded the image (now sRGB) that started this discussion: the HorseShoe Bend of the Colorado River on ExposedPlanet.com. Much more as intended now, though it does miss some oompf from the Prophoto version in LightRoom. Comments welcome!
“

My local colleague is trying to line up a family for some nice shots.

I love it that in the back kids are playing in the warm sea. Oyster Beach is a lively and fun place, with loads of local snacks to be eaten and music and performances to be seen.

“The backdrop for the luncheon will be a painting, chosen for occasion, and borrowed from the New-York Historical Society. The painting, “View of the Yosemite Valley,” by Thomas Hill, reflects the majestic landscape of the American West and the dawn of a new era. The subject of the painting, Yosemite Valley, represents an important but often overlooked event from Lincoln’s presidency — his signing of the 1864 Yosemite Grant, which set aside Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias as a public reserve.”

Congratulations to the US and the world, for getting Bush out the door. Mr Obama will have a hard time proving himself and living up to expectations.

The above quote is from a blog on Barackobama.com, describing the lunch currently taking place. It is nice to see that Lincoln and apparently President Obama’s team want to stress the importance of protecting nature.

Coincidentally, I spent New Years Day on the exact same impressive spot, where the image above is taken. Let’s hope that the new President stresses to the US citizens and the world what is important in life: respect for eachother and for the small world we live on/in, crossing borders imposed by mental and physical colouring, while enjoying the different colours of life..