Talk:Galen Rowell

Citations needed

That whole paragraph on Ansel Adams and about how great Galen Rowell is needs a citation from a scholarly source. Right now it is as if someone just came up and wrote it out of nowhere. Remember, this is an encyclopedia, which means that everything needs to be factual. Additionally, it would be nice if more citations were added to the whole article as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.82.232.151 (talk • contribs) on 21:20, 11 October 2006

Photographs?

Someone should contact Mountain Light and see if they would like to donate a couple lo-res photographs under a restricted license for use on Wikipedia, this article really needs them to best show Galen Rowell's work. Also, a photo of Galen and Barbara would be great, I know a few of them exist. I'll see if I can find a good person to contact from the gallery and do the honors... Trisweb 19:53, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

In response to my e-mail Dean Stevens has sent me the following text and two photographs:

Hi Tristan,

I'm sorry about the delay in replying--as you might imagine, we get a number of requests for images or info. Given that we have a limited staff (and time), we can't always reply as soon as we would like.

I've attached jpegs of two of galen's best known images, Rainbow Over Potola Palace and Stormy Sunset Over Evolution Lake. I've also asked a colleague to send you a picture of Galen (I didn't have one handy, and I wanted to get back to you when I had the opportunity). The credit should read as follows: Photo courtesy Mountain Light Photography. ©Galen Rowell/Mountain Light

I looked at the Wikipedia article, and I do have some comments:

After graduating from Berkeley High School, he stayed in Berkeley to study physics at the University of California but dropped out after four years to pursue his love of climbing. He was never formally trained as a photographer.

Off the top of my head, I don't think he dropped out after four years--I think is was more like two (but I just don't have time to confirm the reference). You might try something more vague like, ". . . He dropped out to pursue . . . "

From 1968 on, he used 35mm Nikon cameras and lenses exclusively because of their quality, reliability, and portability.

You are probably better off saying "almost exclusively." He would sometimes use something else just to check it out, of for a special appliation (like shooting a panoramic).

He and his wife Barbara Cushman Rowell died with their charter pilot and another passenger in a plane crash near Bishop, California, the site of his home and studio, "Mountain Light Photography," which was opened only a year beforehand.

My first point is an important one--the pilot was a friend (as was the other passenger) who picked them up at the airport in SF as a favor--it wasn't a charter flight. Second, while the Bishop branch of the gallery opened in 2000 (two years before the accident), there had been been a branch in the Bay Area since the 80s. They founded Mountain light Photography in 1983. It's first name was High & Wild photography. They changed the name after in response to thew huge success of Mountain Light: In Search of the Dynamic Landscape.

Aside from these points the Wikipedia entry reads very nice. Thank you for your time and effort towards honoring Galen and Barbara's vision and legacy.

Best regards,

Dean

I'll be uploading the images now and I'll post them here and on the article page. trisweb (Talk) 17:57, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Woah, hold on here. You should realize that Wikipedia only can use free image content, not restricted --- because there are commercial mirrors of Wikipedia that serves up ads (for example, http://answers.com . Once you post an image on wikipedia, it will get spread all over the internet, out of control of Wikipedia. No one can promise what you've promised. Please don't post the images. If you have already, please ask an admin to delete them.

Sorry about this. hike395 18:09, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

It's all good, not uploaded or posted yet :-( If it helps any, they're very low resolution, but I don't think that helps... Well, in any case, the article content advice he gave us will be excellent. It's a shame that copyright issues prevent us from making the article be what it should be... guess we'll just have to wait until his images fall into the public domain in a few decades. trisweb (Talk) 18:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)