Chavín de Huantar is an archeological site near Huaraz that goes back to 1200 BC. It has, among others, been used by the Chavín culture, a pre-Inca culture, until around 500 BC. During my first trip to Peru, 33 years ago, I made the above picture. It is a digital scan of a diapositive (slightly processed). In those days I used film, however, for this trip they advised me to use diapositive film because of the colorful projections by the light of a projector. Due to the scan the picture is not as good as the original.
Since then, a lot of things have changed:
- Chavín de Huantar is now on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which means that it is kept in optimal condition and that continuously archeologists are working there.
- The route to it has been improved quite a lot to make it more accessible for the tourists.
- The original diapositive (slide) was taken with a very simple analog camera (I forgot the brand); currently I use a semi-professional camera Nikon D800.
- The analog camera had a fixed lens; here I used a Nikkor 28-300mm zoom lens.
- In those days I had my camera on Automatic; nowadays I mainly shoot in Aperture-priority and NEF (see my blog on this).
- The diapositive film was developed in a darkroom and not by me; currently I turn NEF into JPG by using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.
- In those days GPS was used for military purposes; now everybody has at least one GPS (e.g. in your smartphone).
- Sharing my slides meant setting up the projector and a screen in the living room; in digital form there are many ways to share your pictures with everybody all over the world.
- In those days I had no idea there was an interest in my pictures; now I sell licenses to use them via Dreamstime and I can sell it to several customers (not just one).
The thing that has not changed is that in those days I was very proud of my pictures, and this still holds.
Below I substantially cropped a picture I have taken on my last trip to Peru to get a similar picture as the one from 1982.
For more pictures of Peru accepted by Dreamstime, click here. Enjoy! Update: licenses of all pictures of Chavin de Haunter have been sold.