In the field it is essential to have your camera available for use at a moments notice, since some of the best images are captured under unanticipated, or even emergency, conditions. The Olympus XA lives in a vest pocket, ready for rapid deployment. The only thing that remains constant is that all commercially available emulsions intensify, and greatly exaggerate, the colorfulness of most subjects, making them more glamorous than honest. The photographs in this book were taken with various Kodak and Fuji transparency emulsions, using the slowest, finest-grained, film practical for the situation. Many problems I encounter relate to extremes, and changes, in the climate in the Andes.
Film is sensitive to heat and needs to be protected, especially after it has been exposed.
I often descend from frigid mountain passes into warm, humid rain forest in a matter of hours. As temperature and humidity fluctuate, moisture condenses inside completely inaccessible lens elements and fogs them. This can be extremely frustrating because it is hard to avoid and impossible to rectify quickly. The best you can do is to let the temperature of the cameras continuously equalize with that of the surrounding atmosphere instead of keeping them too well insulated before suddenly exposing them to different conditions. When I use telephoto lenses to capture images of cliff tombs, sometimes over a kilometer from my vantage point, the shimmering effect caused by dynamic changes in the atmosphere, and distortion of light passing through it, is a severe obstacle to obtaining sharp images.