New Steem and Kala Patthar

How are we all finding the so called 'new' steem? It seems to me like we have moved to a new post bit bot era ? What are peoples thoughts on that? With the 50/50 curation I now have my 70k steem set to follow various photography curation trials. Encouraging to see some new blood here like @paulmp . Please check out his amazing work if your not familiar with it. The only downside is that @photofeed is not as active these days as they have been a bedrock for the community for such a long time. Lets see if we can make this work and build a real community here this time in one of these tribes as I think the discontent for facebook and instagram is at an all time high.

This is a very old shot from a five week Himalayan photo assignment I did back in 2004 for a trekking company called Eco-Trek. It is of some frozen prayer flags on the predawn summit of Kala Patthar (5545m). There is approximately 50% of the Oxygen available at sea level at 5500m. Has anyone here spent a lot of time at altitude? Its effects have to be experienced to really understand how difficult it is to move at those levels. Taken in the Nepalese Himalaya on Fuji Velvia slide film. At the time there was no digital charging devices which could deal with a 5 weeks away from a power source so slide film was still king for any remote assignments . There is definitely something about old slides when you looking back at them that seems lost with the ultra sharp digital world we live in today.

I had to climb Kala Patthar in the dark with a head torch three mornings in a row to get a glimpse of Everest at sunrise and took the shot below. Mt Everest, also known as Chomolungma or Sagarmatha, towering above at a massive 8,848 metres (29,029 ft). The summit of Mt Everest has less then 33% of the oxygen available at sea level.

If you would like to learn a little bit more about my background in photography you can read the interview @photofeed did with me here.

Robert Downie
Love Life, Love Photography

_{All images in this post were taken by and remain the Copyright of Robert Downie - http://www.robertdowniephotography.com}