Gaviota Wind Caves, 2011

Over Memorial Day weekend I had been checking the weather in the West and for the first time in many years it was still snowing in the Sierras so instead I stayed at home and got together with a friend to do a hike up to the wind caves. Up along the pass where the 101 climbs up to Buellton, there are a bunch of exposed rock formations. I wasn't aware that this whole little jetty is also categorized as one of the windiest places in the world! Over all of the years the rock faces were exposed, the wind had eddied and worn through the rock and created a whole bunch of carved indendations. There were a whole bunch, some low, some high, and one of them even had some mountain lion tracks up in the dirt from when one was probably sleeping or avoiding the rain! I'd always loved seeing the red colored rocks from the car and always wanted to hike up among them, and thanks to my friend finally I did.

The Photographs

I used this little excursion as a test of a few other films to see if I could find something to replace my beloved Kodachrome. I shot an old roll of Kodak G100VS as I had forgotten how it responds to color...not like there is much choice in Kodak film these days, but I think I liked how it was more subtle than Velvia. Still, I think I like E200 the best. I also shot a roll of one of my old Scala batches I'd had in storage. Although Main Photo didn't do any processing, they were nice enough to return the film to me so I could put it through dr5. I had a wonderful experience with dr5 and their processing looks beautiful for the film, so I look forward to shooting more Scala in the trips to come!

Click "Next" in the upper right to begin.