I am Thankful

Day 1, November 24, 2022

Thanksgiving night in an AirBNB in Terlingua, TX. I heated up a package of coconut chicken from Costco, poured it over rice and served them in two plates, one for me and one for my daughter, Marcia. To say that our Thanksgiving dinner was modest was an understatement, especially after seeing photos of delicacies texted from wife on her gastronomic trip in Taiwan.

3 hours ago, after a day’s drive from Houston, we arrived at the site near the west entrance of Big Bend NP. Here, the Black Peak Formation is laden with K-Pg boundaries, a band in the strata that marked the meteor strike which wiped out most of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.

Marcia and I in front of a formation with K-Pg boundary

Marcia was there to assist as a substitute. My student Gustavo’s new job as a high school photo teacher did not afford him a break. I wasn’t sure how this photo assistant/daughter dynamic would pan out. I remembered vividly that she freaked out in the dark on a family trip, when I was trying to photograph the milky way.

But she was 10 at the time. And we had no better plan for Thanksgiving without my wife, her mom in town. And she had recently broken up with an asshole after 6 years of relationship. The in-family assignment came quite naturally on multiple fronts.

Minutes into her first day at job, she was assembling equipment, communicating through walkie talkies and helping me to refine compositions, hundreds of feet away and operating the projector on her own. It’s so nice to have a grown-up, capable, quick-to-learn daughter! 2 hours , 2 galactic slides and 2 compositions later, we got this:

NGC 1232 and K-Pg boundary

This image is more than a keeper; it definitely makes the cut into the portfolio.

7 months into the inception of Pilgrimage of Light, I’ve experimented through 3 versions of projector, each improved certain aspects of the projection and opened up new possibilities. My compositional approach has involved, too. I came to realize that a key to create the sense of a heavenly body descent on Earth is through separation of projection and photographing points. This one, for example, put a distance of 300 feet between Marcia and I.

With the instant success for the father-daughter team, Costco coconut chicken could hardly dampen the celebratory mood. We toasted with water. We chatted about dodging bullets: her escape from a pathological lier who would certainly make a husband from hell and mine many rubbing shoulders with disasters during on my Pilgrimages of Light. This one promises to be a breeze, with one good image under my belt and 2 more days of sunny weather in store for us. She pick up her cell to check on the weather.

“Uh, Dad, the weather forecast now calls for all rainy, windy and cold tomorrow.”

Damn. There would be no breeze.

Day 2, November 25, 2022

Our day started with surveying the sites. Santa Elena Canyon was the subject on my plan. Back in May, I photographed in Big Bend, but found Santa Elena Canyon’s unique structure in need of separated projection and photographing. Here is an illustration of the plan:

The most exciting plan calls for a hike across the river, which was walking over dried, hardened riverbed back in May, then hiking up the cliff of the Mexican side, and project and photograph down in to the river. Rio Grande wasn’t dry this time. Though we did manage to cross, the alternate route took us up a precarious climb, too risky for repeating in the darkness. Our survey gave us nothing but muddy boots twice as heavy as they used to be.

Even our attempt to have a leisurely lunch was proven too much on the day after Thanksgiving. In the Tex-Mex place next to our AirBNB, the waiting staff looked overwhelmed and the customers cold and hungry. Abandoning our table, we had steaming instant Ramen with eggs. It’s good to be Asian and prepared, and not picky.

But there are things that can’t be defended with frugality and adaptability . Things like a toilet that wouldn’t flush down. The AirBNB owners was on top of it, literally, trying to unclog it with a snake and a plunger, to no avail.

Skipping the shitty situation and fast forward to the twilight hours. We had to give up even the second choice of spot because of the muddiness. From the 3rd choice, the “meh” point, we set up the equipment according to the revised scheme for the large projections.

With clumsy cold fingers, unfamiliarity to the different scheme, and a quarter coin to tighten the tripod adapters nowhere to be found, this set up was slow and untidy. But we did it eventually: a 30-burst multiple exposure of Andromeda Galaxy on the rocky wall of Santa Elena. The Packard shutter in front of the camera lens got stock during one of the exposures and ruined the shot. But, the projection’s exposure appeared to be all correct, despite the misty air’s interference.

I would find out later that the width of the projection was at a whopping 2000 feet, and the slide was completely unharmed by the heat of the flash. Our shoot failed, but the new scheme was a success that will open up possibilities that I couldn’t even fathom.

“We will put this to work tomorrow,” I told Marcia. But what shall we project on?

We returned to the AirBNB room to find a toilet that was still clogged.

Day 3, November 26, 2022

I started the day with a frantic text exchange with the AirBNB owner. Despite her effort, she couldn’t find us a replacement room other than a teepee, which is basically the equivalent of having no toilet. No matter, by the time she gave up, I have booked a room in Fort Stockton. The plan is to make a 3 hour dash to comfortable beds and a functional toilet.

After a survey, we have decided on Cerro Castolon.

Marcia seemed to be not entirely impressed. But being a seasoned Junior Ranger that toured innumerable national parks, she was, if I may say so with some irony, spoiled.

Cerro Castolon is no match to Half Dome or Old Faithful, of course! But it is nonetheless a 2000 feet towering volcanic formation dated back 30 million years. I have just the right galaxy in my archive to go with it. Just you wait, now-senior junior ranger!

We arrived at the site early to make sure all is set up and focused when there was still light.

The large projection scheme calls for improvements on both the projection and the photographing. For the latter, the limit of 10 multiple exposures(why why why? Canon and Nikon!?) imposed by current digital cameras have to be circumvented. Simply keep the shutter open at B setting and fire away the projector won’t work, because too much ambient light would accumulate, overwhelming the projection. My solution is to use the B shutter in conjunction with an external shutter from a century-old brand Packard. This contraption is no stranger to wet plates enthusiasts such as my friend Japheth Storlie, who generously loaned me one from his collection for experiment. Without an onsite documentation, this video is an reenactment at home to show how it’s set up and functions:

Old and new: a Packard mechanical shutter in front of a Canon 5D.

The mechanical shutter has a PC cord port, which is here connected to wireless trigger which gives order to the flash on the projector. The shutter speed is around 1/30, which, after, say, 30 exposures, would only have accumulated ambient exposure for 1 second—no biggie, as long as the moon is not shining bright.

The squeeze bulb is a real good workout for the forearm. I expect to have improved muscle tones after many more shots. Or my assistant will.

On the side of the projector, this is what we have:

Projector 2.1 with air cooling: the air mattress pump send air through the silicon hose into the slide chamber to keep the temperature from rising.

Projector 2.1 added air cooling to 2.0. It comprises an air mattress pump and a silicon hose. When activated, the pump sends cool air, especially in a cold place like winter in Big Bend, into the chamber of the camera(a stupid sentence, because camera is chamber in latin!) to cool off.

After an hours of trial-n-err on exposures and composition, I settle on a scheme with 500 feet between us with the projection directly in the line of site, to be cropped out. From where I stood, I could see her red head light:

Through walkie talkies, we coordinated a shot with 30 bursts of projection. She did the count, I did the workout by squeezing the bulb.

And this is what we got, after overlaying the projection exposure and ambient exposure:

The Javelina

We high 5ed, we packed and hiked back to the car. Marcia later told me she had the bear horn and spray ready all these times. So, no wild life encounter?

I drove, we listen to audio book, chat and with the happy thought of a clean toilet, on the throughly deserted state highway 385. It must be near Marathon, when all of a sudden, the road ahead had an impression like this.

Pardon me for the drawing. Rescind my MFA if you want, U of H.

A javelina, leisurely crossing the road without a car perhaps for hours, was merely 30 feet away from the bumper of my Prius. I cursed and swerved to the opposite traffic lanes, sparing the life of the pig, then I swerved back, avoiding a high speed rollover to spare ours.

Hours later, lying in darkness bed of the La Quinta Inn. I realized that the view of the above illustration could have been the last thing Marcia and I saw. I’m thankful that I’m still here to make this crappy drawing.

And I’m thankful to have a clean toilet.

And I’m thankful that Marcia dodged a bullet by breaking up with the asshole.

And I’m thankful that our first Pilgrimage of Light was a success.

And I’m thankful for Olive’s support.

And I’m thankful to be alive and given the opportunity to do what I love and sharing my work with people I love.