Love at first sight

This image shows the moment I first saw the Aladaglar region. In June 1992 four of us went there for the first time and without a guidebook. We had only a rough description of the region and a map which we cannot make too much sense anyhow. Our plan was to ascent classics routes of Alaca and Kaldi. We bailed, because we didnt had any clue what we are doing.

I shoot 8 pictures with my semi-working Zenith camera and stich them together to hang in front of my desk. A couple of years later I scan them with all the dust and fingerprints. My initial try to stich them together digitally failed, since I was lacking the all the tools (oh, my state-of-the-art 386DX40) and skills at that time. A manually stiched halfdone image was my background for more than a year. The images float around in my harddrive, I never had the courage to delete them, hoping one day I will finish the job.

Finally, after more than 11 years, I put them together, cleaning and color correcting, trying to get the image burned in my mind years ago. Here it is, the exact moment, which changed my life forever.