These images taken in and around Carson Pass. This is an area Joel visited a few times. Earliest photograph in this area was a 1941 Kodachrome when Joel joined the College of Pacific yearly Death Valley trip.
Carson Pass is a mountain pass on the crest of the central Sierra Nevada, in the Eldorado National Forest and Alpine County, eastern California. This area is traversed by autoroute 88.
There are only three 4×5″ negatives in this sleeve from the Jessica Fong Collection of Dardis negatives. They were all marked for print.
The first two negatives are pure landscapes, it doesn’t appear Joel moved his tripod between these two takes, he just panned left to right.
WIth some effort one could actually overlay these two negatives and make a larger panoramic print out of them. This is somewhat of a complicated task if one does it in the analog darkroom, each image has clearly different settings.
When one uses a digital darkroom, then things fall in place a lot easier. There’s no evidence Joel used digital tools, so I’m doing it for him.
Last image is what’s left of a solitary tree. We’ve seen a very similar image recently as part of a sleeve that was earmarked for 16″ x 20″ prints. Joel did like solitary trees, he left us plenty of examples.
I believe the above tree is a dead bristlecone pine. Some of these specimens in the Eastern Sierras were found to approach the ripe old age of 5,000 years. Real archeological weather time capsules. Because of their rarity and importance, these trees, or what remains of them, are protected.
Although the negative has some quality issues at the left hand side, it is still a keeper.
Cheers !
Finding Joel Pahl Dardis 