Terra Galleria Photography

Archive for the ‘Recollections’ Category

Snow in Yosemite Valley

Today marks the official start of the spring, while the weekend saw the re-opening of Yosemite National Park. The park had been closed since February 25, the second longest closure in memory – floods in 1997 closed the park for over two months. The closure of this winter was caused by unusually deep snow. On […]

The Theft, 1996

The Alpinist, available online for a month (Update: free stream available) is the best climbing film I have seen. Watching brought back memories of my previous life in the mountains, and a particular apex moment, the subject of this post. In 1993, I adopted the large format camera and by the end of 1995, my […]

The Backpacking Trip

I first connected with the wilderness on the high peaks of the Alps. Besides the setting of that world new to me, mountain climbing captivated me because of the intense concentration it fostered. During technical ascents on steep faces and ridges, there is nothing but you and the mountain in mind, as the only concern […]

The Road Trip

I initially came to the U.S. in 1993 for a postdoc of 2.5 years on a J-1 visa, with the understanding that I would return to France at the end of the period, where a post would be waiting for me at the research institute where I did my graduate work. However, when 1995 rolled, […]

Big Wall Climbing in Yosemite

Back to the beginning of the year 1993, I knew almost nothing about the U.S. national parks. However, I knew that Yosemite was home to a 3,000 feet high cliff called El Capitan, the tallest in North America. Although El Capitan was my reason for moving to California, finding a partner for the climb proved […]

Starting Large Format Photography in Death Valley

By the fall of 1993, I still didn’t own a car. Back then, the same UC Berkeley student group that I joined for my first trip to Yosemite organized a yearly outing to Death Valley during the Thanksgiving school break. I didn’t know what the place was about, but I had known its name since […]

Picturing the Top of North America

The huge cliffs of Yosemite are what brought me to California, however, compared to the more northern, and therefore more glaciated Alps, the California mountains didn’t seem that big nor impressive. In the spring of 1993, a few months after arriving in California, I therefore set my sights on Mt McKinley – the official name […]

Love at First Sight in Yosemite

After I finished school in France, I wanted to spend a couple years in the U.S. At that time, I was an avid mountaineer and climber. I didn’t know much about the geography of the country, but one of the few places I kept hearing about from other climbers was Yosemite – because of its […]

Ten Years Ago – terragalleria.com

Ten years ago, in April 2001, I launched terragalleria.com. It wasn’t until 2002 that I became serious about turning the website into a business. Although I had high hopes then, little did I know that it would take me to where I am now. In this post, I’ll reflect on where I was ten years […]

The Beginning

Since I’ve been often asked how I got into photography, I’d like to look back with you two decades ago, when photography took a front row position in my life. Although the first camera that I used was a prize won in a photo contest (cameras were loaned to contestants for a day) at about […]